Alucard
by Shadows' Nightmare
Summary: Integra Hellsing is a lonely young girl who lives with her father in a reclusive castle in Transylvania; however, a carriage accident outside her home brings an unexpected friend into the family's care, a beautiful and mysterious girl: Alucard. (One more chapter)
1. An Early Fright

Author's Notes: This is a crossover between J. Sharidan LeFanu's novella "Carmilla," Bram Stoker's novel _Dracula_, and Kohta Hirano's manga _Hellsing_. "Carmilla" actually predated and inspired much of _Dracula_, which in turn predated and inspired much of _Hellsing_. All are Gothic horror vampire stories, all are connected to each other, and so this three-way crossover is actually very appropriate.

Disclaimer: I do not own "Carmilla," _Dracula_ or _Hellsing_.

* * *

In Transylvania we, by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income goes a great way in that part of the world. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name--or perhaps it is a corruption of Dutch, because my paternal grandfather was a Dutchman by the name of Abraham Van Helsing--although I never saw England or Amsterdam. But here in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.

My father was in the Austrian service, whose border lies just north of here, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and shortly thereafter purchased this feudal residence and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.

Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence over Borgo Pass, a countryside which, I must confess, is full of beauty of every kind, from green sloping land, to farmhouses, to fruit orchards. You coming from England would no doubt take the Oriental Express through a series of small villages dotted along the "Birgau," or Borgo valley before finally starting the ascent into the Pass itself. Not for nothing Transylvania is Latin for "the land beyond the forests," for as you travel through the cultivated land you shall pass a river, tall and straight trees, and higher wooded mountains in the distance.

Over all this, save the mountains, the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.

Geographically, the Borgo Pass is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian Mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe.

In the population of Transylvania there are many distinct nationalities. Among many others, there are: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachians, who I am told are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. Our schloss is located more toward the later, my father's reasons being further from the Magyar influence of the West and nearer our "Szekelys allies" to the East and Northern Austrian border.

But really, it makes little difference to _me_ what sorts of people inhabit this territorial crossroads, because our schloss is conspicuously far from any sort of human dwelling. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the hill on which our castle stands descends into miles of desolate fields covered in mist, surrounded by distant mountains covered in forests. The nearest city is Bistritz to the west, which is practically on the other side--for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina. The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the west. The nearest inhabited schloss is that of General Spielsdorf nearly twenty miles away in the same direction.

I have said "the nearest _inhabited_ schloss," because there is, at a respectable distance, a ruined castle. It stands to the east on a mountain higher than our own. It is Gothic in design, positively Medieval in structure, with its high crumbling walls, its great spires, now roofless, towering over the equally desolate fortress which, lording over jagged steps, overlooks the silent mists of the Borgo Pass.

Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time.

I must tell you now how very small is the party who constitute the inhabitants of our castle. I don't include servants, or those dependents who occupy the fiefs attached to the schloss, because I was never permitted to associate with any of them. Listen, and wonder! There is my father, who is the kindest man on earth, but growing old; and I, at the date of my story, only twelve. Ten years have passed since then. I and my father constituted the family at the schloss, as well as my uncle, who often brooded and made himself unwelcome. My mother, a Transylvanian lady, unfortunately died in my infancy. I had no real governess to speak of, because my father did not trust the local women, and could not solicit anyone of "desirable heritage" to come out for very long, and so I relied heavily upon my father for my education.

My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you.

I did, however, have a good-natured butler, named Walter C. Dornez, who had been with me from my infancy. I could not remember a time when his wrinkled, benign face was not a familiar picture in my memory. Walter had just so much control over me as you might conjecture such a sage person would have in the case of a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything.

The first occurrence in my existence produced a terrible impression upon my mind. Some people will think it so trifling that it should not be recorded here. You will see, however, by-and-by, why I mention it. The nursery, as it was called, though I had it all to myself, was a large room in the upper story of the castle, with a steep oak roof. I can't have been more than three years old when one night I awoke, and looking round the room from my bed, failed to see the nursery-maid or my nurse; and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I was one of those happy children who are studiously kept in blissful ignorance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and of all other such lore as to make us cover our heads in fright.

I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived, neglected. I then began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of roaring; when to my surprise I saw a very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a very young lady, who was kneeling with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her cool hands, lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling. I felt delightfully soothed, and fell asleep immediately. I was awakened by the sensation of two needles ran very deep into my breast, and I cried loudly. The young lady started back, with her red eyes fixed on me, then slipped down to the floor and, it seemed to me, hid herself under the bed.

I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might and main. Nurse, nursery-maid, housekeeper, all came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child as I was, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I watched them look under the bed, about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards. I heard the housekeeper whisper to the nurse: "Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed; some one _did_ lie there, as sure as you did not; the place is still warm."

I remember the nursery-maid petting me, and all three examining my chest where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing: "There is no sign visible that any such thing has happened to you."

Shortly thereafter Walter came running in, and demanded to know the situation and what had gone on. The nursery-maid tried to assure him that the situation was under control, but he would have none of it, and interrogated them fiercely. Walter led a thorough investigation, but in the end he was forced to draw the same conclusion as the women: "Some one _was_ here in this nursery, but there is no physical evidence to indicate that any such a thing _did_ happen to Integra."

Walter remained sitting up with me all night, an action which has distilled for him a profound and eternal fondness in my heart; but from that time a servant always sat up in the nursery until I was about twelve.

I was very nervous for a long time after this. A doctor was called in, he was pallid and elderly. How well I remember his long saturnine face, slightly pitted with smallpox, and his chestnut wig. For a good while, every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated.

I remember my father and uncle discussing the situation outside my nursery door. Their voices were slightly muffled, so I did not hear the whole thing, until my father said: "It all seems so occult, something that none of our doctors can explain… Perhaps, you don't think… we should call in… _that_ doctor?"

My uncle rebuked the idea savagely.

It would not be for many years that I would learn of whom they were talking about. Still, hearing of a special doctor put my nerves on end, and the morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and could not bear to be left alone for a moment, daylight though it was.

I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers. When I asked him uneasily about the special doctor, he laughed again, and patted me on the shoulder, and kissed me, and told me, "You need not be frightened my dear girl. No special doctor will be called in, because what transpired last night was nothing but a dream and can not hurt you."

But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was _not_ a dream; and I was _awfully_ frightened.

Certainly my uncle was not so supportive, for he let me know of his disbelief with rude opposition and loud tirades. When he was pulled from my nursery, he said to my father, "You coddle her too much Arthur! This is obviously just a ploy for attention, leave her be and see how miraculously she recovers!"

Ten years later my uncle was still singing the same tune, and when I finally ceased keeping a servant by my bedside, he perceived it as proof that I was lying all along.

In the mean time I was a little consoled by the nursery-maid's assuring me: "It was I who came in and looked at you, and lay down beside you in the bed. You must have been half-dreaming not to have known my face."

Of course I knew this to be a lie.

I also remember, in the course of that day, a venerable old man in a black cassock coming into the room with the nurse and housekeeper. He told me they were going to pray, and joined my hands together, and desired me to say, softly, while they were praying, "Lord hear all good prayers for us, for Jesus' sake." I think these were the very words, for I often repeated them to myself, and for years my nurse used to make me say them in my prayers.

I forget all of my life preceding that event, and for some time after is obscure also, but the scenes I have just described stand out vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria surrounded by darkness.


	2. A Guest

Author's Notes: "Carmilla" is a short story about a young lady named Laura being coveted romantically by the vampiress Carmilla. That is all you need know.

Disclaimer: I do not own "Carmilla," _Dracula_ or _Hellsing_.

* * *

I am now going to tell you something so strange that it will require all your faith in my credibility to believe. Not only is it true, but a truth which I have been an eye-witness.

It was a sweet summer evening. I was sitting in my room reading a book, when my father asked me, as he sometimes did, to take a little ramble with him along those beautiful fields which I have mentioned as lying in front of the schloss.

"General Spielsdorf cannot come to us as soon as I had hoped," my father said, as we pursued our walk.

General Spielsdorf was to have paid us a visit of some weeks, and we had expected his arrival next day. He was to have brought with him a young lady, his niece and ward, Seras Victoria. I had never seen her, but I had heard her described as a very charming girl, and had promised myself many happy days in her society. I was more disappointed than a child living in a town or a bustling neighbourhood can possibly imagine. This visit, and the new acquaintance it promised, had furnished my day dream for many weeks.

"And how soon does he come?" I asked.

"Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare say," he answered. "And I am very glad now that you never knew Miss Victoria."

"But why?" I asked, both mortified and curious.

"Because the poor girl is dead," he replied. "I quite forgot I had not told you, but you were not in the room when I received the General's letter this evening."

I was shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not as well as he would wish her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of danger.

"Here is the General's letter," he said, handing it to me. "I am afraid he is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have been written very nearly in distraction."

We sat down on a rude bench near one of the farmhouses. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendour behind the sylvan horizon. General Spielsdorf's letter was so extraordinary, so vehement, and in some places so self-contradictory, that I read it twice over. The second time was aloud to my father, and still I was unable to account for it, except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind.

It said "I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved her. During the last days of dear Seras's illness I was not able to write to you. Before then I had no idea of her danger. I have lost her, and now learn _all_, too late. She died in the peace of innocence, and in the glorious hope of a blessed futurity. The fiend who betrayed our infatuated hospitality has done it all. I thought I was receiving into my house innocence, gaiety, a charming companion for my lost Seras. Heavens! what a fool have I been! I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause of her sufferings. She is gone without so much as conjecturing the nature of her illness, and the accursed passion of the agent of all this misery. I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster. I am told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful purpose. At present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me. I curse my conceited incredulity, my despicable affectation of superiority, my blindness, my obstinacy—all— too late. I cannot write or talk collectedly now. I am distracted. As soon as I shall have a little recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which may possibly lead me as far as Vienna. Some time in the autumn, two months hence, or earlier if I live, I will see you—that is, if you permit me; I will then tell you all that I scarce dare put upon paper now. Farewell. Pray for me, dear friend."

Thus ended the strange letter. Though I had never seen Seras Victoria, my eyes filled with tears at the sudden intelligence; I was startled, as well as profoundly disappointed.

The sun had now set below the mountain, and it was twilight in the valley by the time I had returned the General's letter to my father.

"What do you think it means?" I asked, breathless.

"I don't know, my darling," my father replied softly, folding the letter and tucking it away into his breast pocket. "I don't know."

It was a soft clear evening, and we loitered, speculating upon the possible meanings of the violent and incoherent letter. We had nearly a mile to walk before reaching the road that passes the schloss in front, and by that time the moon was shining brilliantly. At the main road we encountered the silhouette of two men, one holding a lantern.

"Walter!" I cried joyously, and, losing my bonnet in my haste, flung my arms round his waist in greeting.

"Integra!" my uncle yelled sternly. "You mustn't go running around and hugging strange men like some common prostitute. You are a lady of breeding; it's time to act like it."

"But Walter is not a strange man," I protested, my arms still round him. "I have known him all my life, and he has taken such wonderful care of me that I regard him as a second father, or a favoured uncle."

"Such insolence!" my uncle barked. "In England young ladies know not to talk back to their superiors, the men."

"Please lower your voice Richard," my father said, a little exasperatedly, as he caught up to us. "Integra is still a child."

"A child?" My uncle said, "Nonsense, the girl is nearly twelve years old. In most cultures, especially this _primitive_ one that we inhabit, that makes her an adult."

"Forgive me if I'm speaking out of line Sir, but I do believe that, in most cultures, _thirteen_ is the age of adulthood." Walter said amiably, and winked at me.

I knew that Walter still looked upon me as that same little girl who, I am told, used to run up and give him flowers from the drawing room vase; and as such I knew I could behave that way towards him, at least to an extent. Certainly my father and uncle would never permit such ostensible displays of affection upon their persons, and I vaguely wondered what sort of society England was to have set such strict behavioral restrictions upon the female of the sexes.

We walked on, and as we drew near our schloss I turned about to admire with them the beautiful scene.

The glade through which we had just walked lay before us, and the narrow road wound away between groves of orchards, and was lost to sight amid the distant thickening forest. Over the sloped and low grounds a thin film of mist was stealing like smoke, shrouding the distant mountains with a transparent veil; and here and there we could see the tall and proud trees showered in moonlight.

Do not suppose that Transylvania is "fearful, grim and phantom-haunted," or "a land of dark forests, dread mountains and black, unfathomed lakes. Still the home of magic and devilry," or any other such epithets my father had me read, in part to keep up my English, from short-sighted English authors who have visited this land, for it is simply not so.

No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. The news I had just heard made it melancholy; but nothing could disturb its character of profound mystique, or the enchanted glory and vastness of "the land beyond the forests."

My father, who enjoyed the picturesque, and I stood looking in silence over the expanse before us. The two gentlemen standing a little way behind us discoursed upon the scene, and were eloquent upon the moon.

"When the moon shines with a light so intense," Walter declared, "it is well known that it indicates a special spiritual activity. It acts on dreams, it acts on lunacy, it acts on nervous people, and it has tremendous physical influences connected with life."

"What nonsense you talk Walter," my uncle retorted, "To think that the moon has influence on life, what superstition! You have been consorting with the peasants too long."

"I am only the butler Sir," Walter replied. "I am bound to consort with the peasantry at least some of the time."

"But to adopt their superstition!" my uncle exclaimed contemptuously. "I suppose you also believe that the eve of St. George's Day is a time of heightened occult activity; that there are hidden treasures that give forth a bluish flame; that there is a wolf that 'continues to haunt the Transylvanian forests?!'"

"Not in the least," Walter replied easily. "But see here: the moon this night is full of idyllic and magnetic influence—and see, when you look behind you at the front of the schloss, how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery splendour, as if unseen hands are lighting the rooms to receive fairy guests?"

"Fairy guests!" My uncle was practically in a froth now. "Now you truly talk nonsense! I never heard of such a thing!"

I now believe that Walter was merely jesting, or else deliberately working my uncle into one of his predictable fits, because he leaned down and casually said to me, "Miss Integra, did you happen to notice the ring around the full moon to-night?"

I had not, until he mentioned it.

"It is a sign that it will rain within the next three days," Walter stated matter-of-factly. "Or else that you shall very soon experience an unexpected change."

"What nonsense you speak of Walter!" I smiled, unable to repress my urge to giggle. "Rain is a common occurrence within the Carpathians; and life is always full of unexpected changes. Uncle is right; you _have_ been consorting with the natives for too long."

"It is an English superstition," Walter corrected, and my laughter ceased. After a spell he said: "Let us hope the ring does not turn red, for then it will be an omen that you or someone you care about shall experience a grave misfortune."

With this prophecy Walter moved on, but terror stayed my feet, and I tried not to notice the slight crimson tint that made its way round the moon. I told myself that I was only imagining it, because of what I had just been told, and hastily caught up with the men before I was missed.

There are frightful styles of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our nervous ears; and I walked on, soothed by the low rumble of the men's conversation.

"I have got into one of my moping moods to-night," said my father after a silence, and quoting Shakespeare, whom he used to read aloud by way of keeping up our English, he said:

"'_In truth I know not why I am so sad.  
It wearies me: you say it wearies you;  
But how I got it—came by it.'_

"I forget the rest. But I feel as if some great misfortune were hanging over us. I suppose the poor General's afflicted letter has had something to do with it."

At this moment the unexpected sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs upon the road arrested our attention.

They seemed to be approaching from the main road from whence we came, and very soon the equipage emerged from that point. Two horsemen first came into view, then came a carriage drawn by four horses, and two men rode behind.

It seemed to be the traveling carriage of a person of rank; and we were all immediately absorbed in watching that unusual spectacle. In a few moments it became greatly more interesting as one of the leaders took fright, and after a plunge or two the whole team broke into a wild gallop together. Dashing between the horsemen who rode in front came the carriage; thundering along the road towards us with the speed of a hurricane.

The danger of the scene was made more painful by the clear, long-drawn screams of a female voice from the carriage window.

We all advanced in curiosity and horror; me rather in silence, the rest with various ejaculations of terror.

Our suspense did not last long. Just near the fork in the rode that leads up to our schloss, there is a sharp turn that leads on through the straight and narrow of the Pass. At sight of this the horses swerved, so as to follow the curve of the road, at a pace that was perfectly frightful.

I knew what was coming.

I ran forward with my arm outstretched, as if to warn them or stop them, and cried: "Look out! The carriage is going to crash!"

At the same moment Walter stole behind me, and putting both hands on my shoulders, yelled: "Integra, look away!"

Unable to see it out, I covered my eyes and turned my head away; almost immediately to hear a tremendous thunder of splintering wood, roaring horses and screaming women.

Curiosity opened my eyes to a scene of utter chaos. Two of the horses were down, and the carriage lay upon its side with two wheels in the air. The men were busy removing the traces, and a woman with a commanding air and figure got out, and stood with clasped hands, raising a handkerchief in them every now and then to her eyes. Through the carriage door was lifted a young lady, who appeared to be lifeless. My dear old father was already beside the noblewoman, with his hat in his hand, evidently tendering his aid and the resources of his schloss. The noblewoman did not appear to hear him, or to have eyes for anything but the slender girl who was being placed against the slope of the road.

I approached; the girl was still as death. My father, who piqued himself on being something of a physician, laid his fingers on her wrist. After a moment he assured the noblewoman, who declared herself her mother, "Your daughter's pulse, though faint and irregular, is undoubtedly still distinguishable."

The noblewoman clasped her hands and looked upward in gratitude; but immediately she broke out again in that theatrical way which is, I suppose, natural to some people.

"Who was ever being so born to calamity?" I heard her say, with clasped hands, as I came up. "Here am I, on a journey of life and death, in prosecuting which to lose an hour is possibly to lose all. My child will not have recovered sufficiently to resume her route for who can say how long. I must leave her: I cannot, dare not, delay. How far on, sir, can you tell, is the nearest village? I must leave her there; and shall not see my darling, or even hear of her till my return, three months hence."

I knew not what came over me, but at that moment I felt that I could not bear to be parted from that little lady for an instant.

I plucked my father by the coat, and whispered earnestly: "Oh! Father, pray ask her to let her stay with us—it would be so delightful. Do, pray."

"If Madame will entrust her child to the care of my daughter, and of my good butler Walter C. Dornez, and permit her to remain as our guest under my charge until her return, it will confer a distinction and an obligation upon us, and we shall treat her with all the care and devotion which so sacred a trust deserves."

"I cannot do that, sir, it would be to task your kindness and chivalry too cruelly," said the noblewoman, distractedly.

"It would, on the contrary, be to confer on us a very great kindness at the moment when we most need it. My daughter has just been disappointed by a cruel misfortune, in a visit from which she had long anticipated a great deal of happiness. If you confide this young lady to our care it will be her best consolation. The nearest village on your route is distant, and affords no such inn as you could think of placing your daughter at; you cannot allow her to continue her journey for any considerable distance without danger. If, as you say, you cannot suspend your journey, you must part with her to-night, and nowhere could you do so with more honest assurances of care and tenderness than here."

The noblewoman was what is called a fine looking woman for her time of life, and must have been handsome. She was tall, but not thin, and dressed in black velvet. She looked rather pale, but with a proud and commanding countenance. There was something in her air and appearance, so distinguished and even imposing, as to impress one with a conviction that she was a person of consequence.

By this time the carriage was replaced in its upright position, and the horses, thankfully unharmed, were in the traces again.

The noblewoman threw on her daughter a glance which I fancied was not quite as affectionate as one might have anticipated from the beginning of the scene. Then she beckoned slightly to my father, and withdrew with him two or three steps out of hearing. She talked to him with a fixed and stern countenance, not at all like that with which she had hitherto spoken.

I was filled with wonder that my father did not seem to perceive the change. I was also unbearably curious as to what she was speaking about, almost in his ear, with such earnestness and rapidity.

Two or three minutes at most I think they remained thus employed. Then she turned, and a few steps brought her to where her daughter lay, supported by Walter. She kneeled beside her for a moment, then after hastily kissing her she stepped into her carriage. The door was closed, the footmen jumped up behind, and the riders were re-mounted. Then with a crack of the whips and the spur of the saddles, the horses plunged and suddenly broke into a furious canter that threatened soon again to become a gallop. The carriage whirled away, followed at the same rapid pace by the two horsemen in the rear.


	3. We Compare Notes

Author's Notes: And now ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for: The Awakening of the Great Alucard!

Disclaimer: I do not own Carmilla, Hellsing, or a person of rank's carriage. (le sigh)

* * *

We followed the _cortege_ with our eyes until it was swiftly lost to sight, and the sound of the hoofs and the wheels died away in the silent night.

Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an illusion of a moment but the young lady. I could not see, for her face was turned from me, but she raised her head, evidently looking about her, and I heard a very sweet voice ask complainingly, "Where is Mamma?"

Our good Walter answered tenderly, and added some comfortable assurances.

I then heard her ask:

"Where am I? What is this place?" and after that she said, "I don't see the carriage; and Matska, where is she?"

Walter answered all her questions in so far as he understood them; and gradually the young lady remembered the misadventure with the carriage. On learning that her mamma had left her here till her return in three months, she wept.

I was going to add my consolations to those of Walter when my uncle placed his hand upon my shoulder, saying:

"Don't approach; one at a time is all she can converse with at present. A very little excitement could possibly overpower her now."

These were, perhaps, the most thoughtful words I had ever heard uttered from my uncle's lips, though he gave a stern look to my own of shock, and I hastily fixed my eyes ahead.

'As soon as she is comfortably in bed,' I thought, 'I will run up to her room and see her.'

My father in the meantime had sent a servant on horseback for the physician, who lived about two leagues away, and a bedroom to be prepared for the young lady's reception.

The lady in question now rose, leaning heavily on Walter's arm, and walked slowly over the hill and through the castle gate. Servants waited to receive her in the hall, and she was conducted forthwith to her room.

Father and I waited in the drawing-room. It is furnished in old carved oak, with large carved cabinets, and chairs that are cushioned with crimson Utrecht velvet. The walls are covered with tapestry surrounded with great gold frames, the figures being as large as life in ancient and very curious costume, and the subjects represented as hunting, hawking, and generally festive. It is not too stately to be extremely comfortable; but here we had our tea, for with his usual patriotic leanings Father insisted that the national beverage should make its appearance regularly with our coffee and chocolate.

We sat here this night and, with candles lighted, were talking over the adventure of the evening.

Walter and my uncle were both of our party. The young stranger had hardly lain down in her bed when she declared herself indefatigably exhausted, and sank into a deep sleep; and those two gentlemen who had escorted her had left her in the care of a servant.

"How do you like our guest?" I asked, as soon as Walter entered. "Tell me all about her?"

"I like her extremely," answered Walter. "She is, I almost think, the prettiest creature I ever saw. She is about your age, Miss Integra, and very witty and engaging."

"The devil take her," my uncle barked. "She is, without a doubt, the most arrogant and impertinent little beast I ever beheld!"

"But surely you must admit," threw in Walter politely, as his station dictated, "that she is absolutely beautiful and intelligent."

"A cunning little viper, that's what she is," my uncle retorted. "And I thought Integra was bad! This... this _tartar_ will bewitch Integra and ruin the family just as the serpent lead Eve astray and took down the Garden of Eden, with her fair looks, quick wit and silver tongue!"

"Somehow I doubt she is a _tartar_, sir, with such fine breeding and education as hers," Walter said politely. "I know the gypsies are known for their tricks, but somehow I highly doubt that even the most cunning could put on a show like tonight."

"You are too trusting, old butler," my uncle seethed. "I know that she is playing us for fools; mark my words!"

Hearing such contradictory remarks about a single girl only made me all the more eager to make her acquaintance.

"Consider them marked," Walter replied. "On that note, did you remark what an ill-looking pack of men the servants were?"

"Yes," said my father, who had just come in. "Ugly, hang-dog looking fellows, as ever I beheld in my life."

"And quite worn out with too long travelling," said Walter. "Their faces were strangely lean, dark and sullen, as well as looking wicked."

"Indeed," my father replied, ignoring my uncle's insistence that it was tartars. "I hope they mayn't rob the poor lady in the forest. They are clever rogues, however; they got everything to rights in a minute."

"I am rather curious, I own," said Walter. "But I suppose the young lady will tell you all about it to-morrow, if she is sufficiently recovered."

"I don't think she will," said my father, with a mysterious smile, and a little nod of his head, as if he knew more about it than he cared to tell us.

This made us all the more inquisitive as to what had passed between him and the lady in the black velvet.

We were scarcely alone, when I entreated him to tell me. He did not need much pressing.

"There is no particular reason why I should not tell you, my daughter. She expressed a reluctance to trouble us with the care of her daughter, saying she was rather saucy and spirited, but not dangerous—she volunteered that—nor too troublesome; being, in fact, perfectly safe."

"How very odd to say all that!" I interpolated. "It was so unnecessary."

"At all events it _was_ said," he laughed, "and as you wish to know all that passed, which was indeed very little, I tell you. She then said, 'I am making a long journey of _vital_ importance—she emphasized the word—rapid and secret; I shall return for my child in three months; in the meantime, she will be silent as to who we are, whence we come, and whither we are travelling.' That is all she said. She spoke very pure Saxon dialect, as they do to the south, in Wallachia. When she said the word 'secret,' she paused for a few seconds, looking sternly, her eyes fixed on mine. I fancy she makes a great point of that; you saw how quickly she was gone. I hope I have not done a very foolish thing, in taking charge of the young lady."

For my part, I was delighted. I was longing to see and talk to her; but my father insisted that I must wait till the doctor should give me leave.

The doctor did not arrive till nearly one o'clock; but I could no more have gone to my bed and slept than I could have overtaken, on foot, the carriage in which the princess in black velvet had driven away under the red moon.

When the physician came down to the drawing-room, it was to report very favourably upon his patient. "She is now sitting up, her pulse is quite regular, and she is apparently perfectly well. She has sustained no injury, and the little shock to her nerves has passed away quite harmlessly."

"Does that mean it is now safe for me to see her?" I asked earnestly.

"Integra!" my uncle chastised, but the doctor, of a good-natured sort, laughed.

"There could certainly be no harm in you seeing her," he assured me, "if you both wish it."

No sooner was this permission granted did I dart upstairs as if my very life depended on it.

Our visitor lay in one of the handsomest rooms in the schloss. It was, perhaps, a little stately. There was a sombre piece of tapestry opposite the foot of the bed, representing Cleopatra with the asps to her bosom; and other solemn classic scenes were displayed upon the other walls, a little faded. But there was gold carving, and rich and varied colour enough in the other decorations of the room, to more than redeem the gloom of the old tapestry.

There were candles at the bed-side. She was sitting up, her pretty slender figure enveloped in a soft silk dressing-gown.

"Hello," I said breathlessly, as I reached the bed-side, "Welcome to our--"

What was it that struck me dumb, in that moment, and made me recoil a step or two from before her? I will tell you.

I saw the very face which had visited me in my childhood at night, which remained so fixed in my memory, and on which I had for so many years so often ruminated with horror, when no one suspected of what I was thinking. It was pretty, even beautiful; and when I first beheld it, wore the same passive expression.

But this almost instantly lighted into a strange fixed smile of recognition.

"How wonderful!" she exclaimed. "Ten years ago, I saw you in a dream, and it has haunted me ever since."

"Wonderful indeed!" I repeated, overcoming with an effort the horror that had rendered me speechless. "Ten years ago, in vision or reality, _I_ certainly saw you. It has remained before my eyes ever since; I could never forget your face."

Her smile softened. Whatever I had fancied strange in it was gone now, and it and her bright eyes now delightfully pretty and intelligent.

I felt reassured, and continued more in the vein which hospitality indicated, to bid her welcome, and to tell her how much pleasure her accidental arrival had given us all, and especially what a happiness it was to me.

Suddenly I heard her giggle. "My dear hostess," she said, "you sound as if you are reading slowly off a poorly written speech!"

I could feel my courage slipping away. The colour rushed to my cheeks and my eyes were downcast. "Really? I don't mean to..."

"So am I to believe," she declared, "That you are not really happy to see me, and only welcome me as a perfunctory act of duty?"

"Never," I intercepted, a bit forcefully; and I attempted to reiterate what an immense joy it was to us, to _me_, that she was here. I took her hand as I spoke. I was a little shy, as lonely people are, but the situation made me eloquent, and even bold.

"So then, am I to assume," she said, playfully, "that you are happy that my carriage has crashed, and that I have been abandoned to this residence for three months hence, just so that I may be here with you?"

I thought about it long and long. "Though I believe that the circumstances leading up to your unexpected arrival are unfortunate..." I said slowly, and willed my timid eyes to look into her fiery ones, and pressed her cool hand with my own just as fiercely. "I am very delighted that you _are_ here, and I am very pleased to have made your acquaintance."

She pressed my hand, she laid hers upon it, and her eyes glowed as, looking hastily into mine, she smiled again, and blushed. "Of course, I too am very delighted to be in your hospitality," she said, in a murmur that was very low and husky for one her size. "And, as far as making acquaintances go, the _pleasure_ is all mine."

Had she been a man and I a woman, or I a man and she a woman, I would have believed her to be flirting. I sat down beside her, still wondering; when she suddenly became very lively again and said:

"I must tell you now my vision about you; it is so very strange that you and I should have had such similar visions, around such a similar time. Ten years ago I awoke from a confused and troubled dream, and found myself in a room unlike my own. It was wainscoted clumsily in some dark wood, and with cupboards, bedsteads, chairs and benches placed about it. The beds were all empty, I thought, and beside one of these was an oak nightstand, on which stood an iron candlestick with two branches, which I should certainly know again. Does any of this sound familiar?"

Being informed of the affirmative, she continued on with her narration.

"After looking about me for some time, I crept under one of the beds to reach the window; but as I got from under the bed, I heard someone crying. Looking up, while I was still upon my knees, I saw _you_—most assuredly you—as I see you now: a beautiful young lady, with golden hair and large blue eyes—_you_—just as you are. You were all alone in that ghastly nursery, yet you seemed not the least bit afraid, and crying in defiance rather than in fear. Your spirit won me; I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you, and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream; you were sitting up screaming. I slipped down upon the ground and, it seemed to me, lost consciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself I was again in my chamber. I have never forgotten you since. I could not be misled by mere resemblance, for appearance and shape means nothing to me. No, you _are_ the lady whom I saw then."

It was now my turn to relate my corresponding vision, which I did, to the undisguised wonder of my new acquaintance.

"I don't know which should be most afraid of the other," she said, again smiling that strange smile at me. "If you were less attractive I think I should be very much afraid of you. But being as you are, I feel only that I have made your acquaintance ten years ago, and have already a right to your intimacy. I wonder whether you feel as strangely drawn towards me as I do to you. I have never had a friend—shall I find one now?" She sighed, and her fine eyes gazed passionately on me.

Now the truth is, I did feel, as she said, "drawn towards her," but there was also something of repulsion. However, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so beautiful and so indescribably engaging.

I perceived now something of languor and exhaustion stealing over her, and hastened to bid her good night.

"The doctor thinks," I added, "that you ought to have a maid to sit up with you to-night; one of ours is waiting, and you will find her a very useful and quiet creature."

"How kind of you, but I could not sleep, I never could with an attendant in the room. I shan't require any assistance—I grew up in a war-torn country, where enemies tried to kill me nightly in my bed, and always lock my door. It has become a habit—and you are so kind I know you will forgive me. I see there is a key in the lock."

She held me close in her pretty arms for a moment and whispered in my ear, "Good night, darling, it is very hard to part with you, but good night."

"Shall I see you again soon?" I asked pitifully, almost fearfully, as I clutched her more tightly. I must confess that, at that moment, though I knew not why, I felt as if I would leave a piece of my soul behind if I were to part with her now.

She pulled away, now smiling that strange smile again, as if she knew what I was thinking; and she stroked my hair gently, and whispered softly: "To-morrow, but not early, we shall see each other again."

She sank back on the pillow with a sigh, and her fine eyes followed me with a fond gaze, and she murmured again "Good night, dear friend."

Young people like, and even love, on impulse. I was flattered by the evident, though as yet undeserved, fondness she showed me. I liked the confidence with which she at once received me. She was determined that we should be very near friends.

Next day came and I went to see her. I remembered that she had said "not early," though it was scarcely ten when I could wait no longer and ran to her room as the night before; only to find it empty. The bed was perfectly made, and the silk slippers she had kept by her bedside the night before were gone; it was as if she were never here. I looked about the room, when I suddenly heard a loud "HA!" and was tackled to the ground from behind. I screamed, and after a bit of tumbling I landed on my back, and the culprit on my waist. I heard laughing, and looked up to see the merry face of our impertinent guest!

"You should have seen the look on your face!" she exclaimed gleefully, laughing, and nuzzled my very warm cheek.

I was silent for a moment; I could not believe her gall. Finally I mustered up the nerve to ask, "How could you do such a thing?"

She laughed again and leaned down, her hips, I believed, accidentally rocking on my own, and nuzzled my neck affectionately. "Oh Integra dear, please do not glare at me so. Truly I meant no harm; you must understand that I simply could not resist."

She spoke in such a way that made it impossible for me to stay angry with her for very long; though I still wanted to know how she could play such a horrible trick.

"Trick?" she said disbelievingly, and sat up straight, and looked me in the eyes, and hastened to make amends. "Oh no, dear Integra, it is no trick at all. Did you not say that when you first beheld my face, which you were struck with unspeakable horror from that unpleasant vision you received as a child? I could not allow such an atrocity to go on, and so I decided to wipe the slate clean of your memory by creating a new fright of my own. From now on, when you behold my face, you shall feel no fear; except from this stunt this very morning and not some terrible fright from so long ago."

I understood her logic, though I was surprised by the saucy nature in which she acted upon it.

She laughed again, and leaned down to kiss my nose. Her looks lost nothing in daylight—she was certainly the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and her plan must have worked, for the unpleasant remembrance of the face presented in my early dream had lost the effect of the first unexpected recognition.

"I confess that I experienced a similar shock on seeing you," she said carelessly, her elbows resting on my shoulders, "and precisely the same faint antipathy that mingled with my admiration of you."

We now laughed together over our momentary horrors.


	4. Her Habits: A Saunter

Author's Notes: I have fixed this chapter. Now our mysterious guest should be more like "Alucard" than "Carmilla."

Disclaimer: I do not own Hellsing, Carmilla, Dracula, or a schloss in Transylvania. (Boo!)

* * *

I told you that I was charmed with her in most particulars.

I shall begin by describing her. She was about the same size as I, slender and wonderfully graceful. Except that her movements, like her mama's, were exaggerated—_very_ exaggerated— indeed, she strutted about at all times like an actress on stage; the world was her theatre. Her complexion was cool and white; snow could not have had a paler hue. Her features were small and beautifully formed, and her eyes were sharp, green and lustrous. Her hair was quite wonderful; I never saw locks so magnificently long and straight as when it was down about her waist.

Once, as we were talking in her room, she stopped suddenly, fixed her fine eyes on mine, and smiled that little mysterious smile of hers. "You like my hair, don't you, Integra?"

Realizing that I'd been staring, I suddenly became very embarrassed and ashamed, and could feel the colour rushing to my face as I cast my eyes downward. "Really? I didn't mean to..."

"And you say that _I_ am impertinent!" she sighed exasperatedly, and stood up suddenly. "Well, if you really cannot help yourself, then we simply _must_ remedy the problem at once!"

So saying, she strutted to her vanity like a princess, lay back in her chair dramatically, and spread her hair out elegantly, as she continued talking in her sweet low voice: "Now I shall allow you to groom me as I finish telling you what comes of mating griffins with horses."

Hesitantly, I placed my hands under it, and laughed with wonder at its weight. It was as exquisitely fine and soft as silk, and in colour a rich and very pure black. I had always assumed that dark hair would feel slightly coarse to the touch, or else lose its fine sheen and appear slightly brown in daylight, but hers was no such thing. I often loved to let it down, to fold and braid it, and to spread it out and play with it.

"You remind me of the fairy tale princess _Schneewittchen_," I would say, "with your hair black as ebony, your skin white as snow, and your lips red as blood. Truly, the Brothers Grimm must have been describing _you_ when they wrote of her beauty."

"I have never heard of _Schneewittchen_," she said once, "yet you keep comparing me to her. Is she a clever girl?"

"I suppose, in English, she is more commonly known as Snow White," and I proceeded to tell her the story.

"I am not like Snow White at all," she said irritably, once I had finished. "She is a very stupid girl who allowed Death at her door, not once, not twice, but thrice!"

"I suppose," I agreed, timidly, "that you would prefer the account of _Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot_, or Snow White and Rose Red?"

This piqued her most intense interest, and my beautiful companion asked earnestly after the story, but rather than troubling to explain it to her, I fetched her a copy of my Grimm account. "Read it to me," she said carelessly, "I do so love to hear the sound of your voice."

We were lying in bed by this time, I against the many silken throw pillows and she reclining against me, and I proceeded to read to her.

_"There was once a poor widow who lived in a lonely cottage. In front of the cottage was a garden wherein stood two rose-trees, one of which bore white and the other red roses. She had two children who were like the two rose-trees, and one was called Snow-white and the other Rose-red. They were as good and happy, as busy and cheerful, as ever two children in the world were..."_

I paused. Seeing as she had not yet interrupted me, as she was prone to do when she was bored, I assumed that she liked it, and carried on.

_"The two children were so fond of each other that they always held each other by the hand when they went out together, and when Snow-white said, "We will not leave each other," Rose-red answered, "Never so long as we live," and their mother would add, "What one has she must share with the other."_

I had not realized my beautiful companion had leaned off of me until she suddenly yelled "HA!" like the morning we met and tackled me to the bed. I yelped as the book was thrown from my hands, and we tumbled for a moment before my companion thrust me to the bed. "Wonderful Integra! You were very right to compare me to Snow White, for I am very like her after all, and you are my perfect counterpart." She laughed softly, and smiled mysteriously. "If I am Snow White, then you are Rose Red."

"But," I protested weakly, "it says in the book that Snow White and Rose Red are sisters, which you and I are not." I could feel her hot breath on my cheek; feel her firm hips on my own. "And, and it says that Rose Red is the more rambunctious of the two, which you know I am not."

"That is true," she replied carelessly, "While I appear more like Snow White, with my skin white as snow, my lips red as blood, and my hair dark as night, you appear more like Rose Red, with your hair gold as the sun, your eyes blue as the sky, and your skin rich as the earth. I have Snow White's appearance while you have her docile nature, and you have Rose Red's appearance while I have her wild nature." She was staring deeply into my eyes, and smiled that mysterious smile of hers. "'What one has she must share with the other.'"

Heavens! If I had but known all!

I said there were particulars which did not please me so well.

I have told you that her confidence won me the first night I saw her, and again with the story of _Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot_; but I found that she exercised with respect to herself, her mother, her history, everything in fact connected with her life, plans, and people, an ever wakeful reserve.

It was, of course, very unfair of me to press her, very ill-bred, but I really could not help it; and I might just as well have let it alone.

There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in her smiling persistent refusal to afford me the least ray of light.

"Will you not," I said one night, "at least elude to me a name by which I may address you?"

"Matska," she said, after a long silence, "the woman you saw in the carriage, called me..."

What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable estimation—to nothing.

It was all summed up in three very vague disclosures:

First—Her name was Alucard.

Second—Her family was very ancient and noble.

Third—Her home lay in the direction of the south.

She would not tell me the name of her family, nor their armorial bearings, nor the name of their estate, nor even that of the country they lived in.

You are not to suppose that I worried her incessantly on these subjects. I watched opportunity, and rather insinuated than urged my inquiries, for she was rather arrogant, and loved very much to discuss in great detail of her many admirable qualities and virtues.

Once or twice, indeed, I did attack her more directly. "What harm could it do anyone to tell me what I so ardently desire to know? Have you no trust in my good sense or honour? Why will you not believe me when I assure you, so solemnly, that I will not divulge one syllable of what you tell me to any mortal breathing?"

But no matter what my tactics, utter failure was invariably the result. Reproaches and caresses were all lost upon her.

She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, "Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours." To my exclamation of disbelief she would say: "Come now, pretty sweeting, surely you _must_ know much I adore you, and of the highest faith I have in your good honour. When the time has come, you shall at last know all; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit."

And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.

From these foolish embraces, which were not of very frequent occurrence, I must allow, I used to wish to extricate myself; but my energies seemed to fail me. Her murmured words sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my resistance into a trance, from which I only seemed to recover myself when she withdrew her arms.

"What can you mean by all this?" I would ask, "I remind you perhaps of some one whom you love."

"Not in the least," she would reply carelessly, "you are quite unlike anyone I have ever met before."

"And I suppose then," I would accuse, with tears in my eyes, "that I am quite unlike anyone you _can_ love."

"On the contrary," she would say, bringing my fingers to her lips and, with eyes closed, kiss my knuckles gently. "You are quite the only one I feel as if I am capable of feeling any sort of affection for."

"But you must not, I hate it; I don't know you—I don't know myself when you look so and talk so."

She used to sigh at my vehemence, then turn away and drop my hand.

Respecting these very extraordinary manifestations I strove in vain to form any satisfactory theory—I could not refer them to affectation or trick. Was she subject to brief visitations of insanity; or was there here a disguise and a romance? I had read in old story books of such things. What if a boyish lover had found his way into the house, and sought to prosecute his suit in masquerade, with the assistance of a clever old adventuress. 'But there are many things against this hypothesis,' I would say to myself, 'highly interesting as it is to my vanity.'

Between these passionate moments there were long intervals of common-place, of gaiety, of brooding melancholy. Except in these brief periods of mysterious adoration her ways were girlish; and there was always a carelessness about her, as she sauntered about our home like a princess before her subjects. A spoiled child of aristocracy, she would laugh in the face of my uncle's accusations of her history, and speak to my father on world subjects with artlessness and frankness. She was always an animated talker, and very intelligent.

In other respects her habits were odd. Perhaps not so singular in the opinion of a town lady like you, as they appeared to us rustic people. She used to come down very late, generally not till one o'clock, she would then take a cup of chocolate, but eat nothing. Sometimes even then she would fail to come down, and I would go up to fetch her.

"Alucard," I would say, circling the bed, in which she was covered so completely. "Alucard, you must get up now. It is tea time, and you have slept right through breakfast. Alucard!"

Still she would not budge. I would then crawl into the bed next to her, and shake her earnestly by the shoulder. "Alucard, this is not funny, you really must get up. We have the whole day together, and you are squandering it away. Will you not get up?"

She would always obstinately ignore me or else remain in a deep slumber, I could never tell which, for she seemed to sleep like the dead. But just as I always went to leave, I would feel a cool hand suddenly wrap round my wrist, and pull me down and under the bedclothes with lightening speed. This would invariably startle me, yet whenever I felt those familiar cool arms wrap round my waist firmly, I would ceased struggling.

"Just so you know," Alucard would whisper, huskily, and kissing my ear, "I would never squander my time with you."

Sometimes we would go out for a walk, which was a mere saunter, and she always seemed almost immediately bored, and either returned to the schloss or sat on one of the benches that were placed, here and there, among the orchards, and demand my undivided attention.

As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees a funeral passed us by. It was that of a pretty young girl, whom I had sometimes seen, the daughter of one of the rangers of the forest. The poor man was walking behind the coffin of his darling; she was his only child, and he looked quite heartbroken. Peasants walking two-and-two came behind, they were singing a funeral hymn.

I rose to mark my respect as they passed, and joined in the hymn they were very sweetly singing.

My companion shook me a little roughly, and I turned surprised.

She said brusquely, "Don't you perceive how discordant that is?"

"I think it very sweet, on the contrary," I answered, vexed at the interruption.

I resumed instantly, and was again interrupted. "You pierce my ears," said Alucard, almost angrily, and stopping her ears with her tiny fingers. "Besides, how can you tell that your religion and mine are the same? Your forms wound me, and I hate funerals. What a fuss! Why _you_ must die— everyone must die; and all are happier when they do. Come home."

"My father has gone on with the clergyman to the churchyard. I thought you knew she was to be buried to-day."

"_She?_ I don't trouble my head about peasants. I don't know who she is," answered Alucard, with a crimson flash from her fine green eyes.

"She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight ago, and has been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she expired."

"Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shan't sleep to-night if you do."

"I hope there is no plague or fever coming; all this looks very like it," I continued. "The swineherd's young wife died only a week ago, and she thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her bed, and nearly strangled her. Father says such horrible fancies do accompany some forms of fever. She was quite well the day before. She sank afterwards, and died before a week."

"Well, _her_ funeral is over, I hope, and _her_ hymn sung; and our ears shan't be tortured with that discord and jargon. It has made me nervous. Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it hard-hard-_harder_."

We had moved a little back, and had come to another seat.

She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even terrified me for a moment. It darkened, and became horribly livid; her teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, with eyes that seemed, for one dreadful instant, to flash that terrifying shade of red that was not altogether unfamiliar, and trembled all over with a continued shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided. "There! That comes of strangling people with hymns!" she said at last. "Hold me, hold me still. It is passing away."

And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the sombre impression which the spectacle had left upon me, she became unusually animated and chatty; and so we got home.

This was the first time I had seen her exhibit anything like temper. It passed away like a summer cloud; but very soon I witnessed on her part another tell-tale sign of anger. I will tell you how it happened.

She and I were looking out of one of the long drawing-room windows, when there entered the courtyard a figure of a wanderer whom I knew very well. He used to visit the schloss generally twice a year.

It was the figure of a hunchback who wore a pointed black beard, and he was smiling from ear to ear, showing his white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and scarlet, and crossed with more straps and belts than I could count, from which hung all manner of things. Behind, he carried a magic-lantern, and two boxes, which I well knew, in one of which was a salamander, and in the other a mandrake. These monsters used to make my father laugh. They were compounded of parts of monkeys, parrots squirrels, fish, and hedgehogs, dried and stitched together with great neatness and startling effect. He had a fiddle, a box of conjuring apparatus, a pair of foils and masks attached to his belt, several other mysterious cases dangling about him, and a black staff with copper ferrules in his hand.

His companion was a rough spare dog that followed at his heels, but stopped short suspiciously at the castle gate, and in a little while began to howl dismally.

In the meantime the mountebank stood in the midst of the court-yard, raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very ceremonious bow.

"Top of the evening to you, young ladies," he said very volubly in execrable French, and German not much better. Then, disengaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air to which he sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity that made me laugh, in spite of the dog's howling.

Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and salutations.

"Will your ladyships be pleased to buy an amulet against the oupire, which is going like the wolf, I hear, through these woods," he said dropping his hat on the pavement. "They are dying of it right and left and here is a charm that never fails; only pinned to the pillow, and you may laugh in his face."

These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with cabalistic ciphers and pentagrams upon them.

Alucard instantly purchased one, and so did I.

He was looking up, and we were smiling down upon him, amused; at least, I can answer for myself. His piercing black eye, as he looked up in our faces, seemed to detect something that fixed for a moment his curiosity.

In an instant he unrolled a leather case, full of all manner of odd little steel instruments.

"See here, my lady," he said, displaying it, and addressing me, "I profess, among other things less useful, the art of dentistry. Plague take the dog!" he interpolated. "Silence, beast! He howls so that your ladyships can scarcely hear a word. Your noble friend, the young lady at your right, has the sharpest tooth—long, thin, pointed, like an awl, like a needle; ha, ha! With my sharp and long sight, as I look up, I have seen it distinctly; now if it happens to hurt the young lady, and I think it must, here am I, here are my file, my punch, my nippers; I will make it round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases; no longer the tooth of a fish, but of a beautiful young lady as she is. Hey? Is the young lady displeased? Have I been too bold? Have I offended her?"

The young lady, indeed, looked very angry as she drew back from the window.

"How dares that mountebank insult us so? Where is your father? I shall demand redress from him. Were this my home, _I_ would have the wretch tied up to a team of horses, flogged with a cart-whip, impaled upon a pike and left to rot in the castle court-yard!"

She retired from the window a step or two and sat down, positively seething with rage. Her fiery red eyes had hardly met my own terrified ones, however, when her wrath subsided as suddenly as it had risen, and she gradually recovered her usual tone, and seemed to forget the little hunchback and all his follies.

My father was out of spirits that evening. On coming in he told us that there had been another case very similar to the two fatal ones which had lately occurred. The sister of a young peasant on his estate, only a mile away, was very ill, had been, as she described it, attacked very nearly in the same way, and was now slowly but steadily sinking.

"All this," said my father, "is strictly referable to natural causes. These poor people infect one another with their superstitions, and so repeat in imagination the images of terror that have infested their neighbors."

"So then," Alucard challenged playfully: "You do not believe that we are in danger of being infected?"

"We are in God's hands: nothing can happen without His permission, and all will end well for those who love Him. He is our faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us."

"Creator! _Nature!_" said the fiery young lady in answer to my gentle father. "And this disease that invades the country is natural. Nature. All of these peasants who are afflicted are just as faithful, if not more so, than you are; but has the Creator saved them? I think not!"

"I have already spoken with the priest," said my father, after a silence. "The doctor said he would come here to-day. I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we had better do."

"Priests never did me any good," said Alucard peevishly.

"Then you have lost you faith?" I asked, almost pityingly.

"More faith than ever you had," she answered bitterly.

"Long ago?"

"Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very piety; I forgot all but my loyalty and devotion, but in the end I had nothing to show for my profound sacrifice."

I suddenly felt very sorry for her. "You were very young then?"

"I'm afraid not; let us talk no more of it. You would not wound a friend?"

She looked languidly in my eyes, with an underlying melancholy that was heart-breaking, and passed her arm round my waist lovingly, and led me out of the room. My father was busy over some papers near the window.

"Why does your father like to bother us so?" said the pretty girl with a sigh and a little shudder.

"He doesn't, dear Alucard, it is the very furthest thing from his mind."

"Do you believe in God, dearest?"

"Of course," was the instant reply.

"Are you afraid to die?"

"Yes, every one is."

"But to die as lovers may—to die together, so that they may live together."

"So then you believe in God, in His Eternal Kingdom, if you believe in the Afterlife?" I asked, relieved that she had not completely lost her faith, but still terrified by what, I believed, she was implying.

"Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes," she continued, whimsically ignoring my questions. "But in the meantime they are grubs and larvae, don't you see— each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. To allow such potential beauty to die prematurely, or else become irreversibly ruined before the final metamorphosis, would be the greatest sin of all, don't you agree?"

"I do not understand what you are saying," but that was all that was said on the subject; she would speak no more of it.

Later in the day the doctor came, and was closeted with my father for some time. He was a skilful man, of sixty and upwards, and shaved his pale face as smooth as a pumpkin. He and my father emerged from the room together, and I heard my father laugh, and say as they came out:

"Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs and dragons?"

The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head—

"Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either."

And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what any of them had been broaching, but I think I guess it now.


	5. A Wonderful Likeness

Author's Notes: Three things. One, I'm sorry this took forever. Two, I edited the beginning of chapter four, which you will need to see. Three, Mystery is the new Horror.

Disclaimer: I do not own _Hellsing_, _Dracula_ or "Carmilla."

* * *

This evening there arrived from Bistritz the grave son of the picture cleaner, with a horse and cart laden with two large packing cases, having many pictures in each. It was a journey of ten leagues, and whenever a messenger arrived at the schloss from the city of Bistritz, we used to crowd about him in the hall to hear the news.

Seeing the picture cleaner arrive several hours later recalled a memory to life, of when my father and I had made the long journey some time before to visit the very picture cleaner in Bistritz himself, only to find out that the portraits were not yet ready.

While my father spoke with the gentleman at the front counter, I wandered in back to gaze at the countless old pictures, nearly all portraits, which had yet to undergo the process of renovation. My mother was of an old Hungarian family, and most of these pictures had come to us through her.

One portrait in particular caught my interest, and I nearly knocked over a lone table standing in the centre of the room, in my rapt interest to get a closer look.

It was a large portrait, about three and a half feet high, and without a frame. There were ghastly claw marks in the centre, as if a great beast had slashed through it in a fit of rage, and it was so blackened by age that I could not make it out. Except that, just a little above the torn flap, were two of the most enchanting green eyes I have ever beheld, whether in a person or in a portrait.

I squinted to better make out such eyes, and hesitantly lifted the tattered fabric to see the face of whom they belonged; when I suddenly heard my father calling me back outside.

"I'm afraid we've come all this way for nothing Integra," my father said, once we were in the street. "There has apparently been a recent shipment of portraits, to add to the ones already here, and now the picture cleaner must start cleaning the new pictures as well as the old ones. I did not know we even had so many portraits in our possession."

"Did all the pictures in the shop belong to us, Father?"

"Yes," said my father, with a weary sigh. "I dare say the poor man has his work cut out for him; you saw how crowded the shop is. It takes a great deal of time and care to revive an old portrait that has been eaten away by time, to gently remove the dust and grim that has integrated itself in the seams over the decades, without disturbing the paint that makes up the portrait's composition. I dare say it will be many weeks' time yet before we can even think of accepting any of those pictures into our schloss again. Forgive me Integra, but it appears that we have made this long journey to no avail."

But I did not feel that way at all. I loved coming to town, however rarely it was, and had been looking forward to such a visit for quite some time.

At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts of attire. Some of them were just like the peasants at home or those I have read about as coming from England, France and Germany, with short jackets, and round hats, and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque.

The women looked pretty, except some when you got near them, and many were very clumsy about the waist. They had all full white sleeves of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet.

The most intriguing figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more rugged than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. My uncle says that on the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather genial in nature.

I was winding about the crowds excitedly as a child in a toy shop, until a great wind suddenly blew, nearly taking my hat and shawl, but succeeding with my handkerchief. As I was chasing it, with my father close behind, a stranger suddenly picked up, and I froze as he stood to look at me.

He was a tall gentleman, clean shaven save for a little black moustache, and clad exquisitely in an impeccable black suit, with a duster and top hat of the exact same colour. Under his hat, which had a ribbon round it, his hair cascaded about his shoulders in long black curls, which contrasted beautifully with his face, which was pale as the moon. I could not see his eyes, for they were covered in round sunglasses, as well as his hands by gloves that were white as his face. All in all he was, I dare say, the most handsome gentleman I had ever beheld in my life.

He smiled, and held out my handkerchief.

"Have you lost something, Miss?" His voice was a deep baritone, with an accent not unlike the natives, but much richer; deeper.

I suddenly became very embarrassed, and I could not meet his eye. I imagine my face was very red too, and I could only nod mutely.

"Yes, thank you my good man," my father said, stepping forward, for which I was extraordinarily grateful. "My daughter has been chasing that silly thing all up and down the streets, and there's no knowing how much longer she would have continued to pursue it."

"You need not trouble yourself, my good sir," the gentleman said, smiling at me, "the pleasure was all mine."

He leaned down and held out my handkerchief for me to take.

Hesitantly I accepted it, and then quickly moved closer to my father.

"You must forgive my daughter," my father said, "she is rather shy."

"Please, you need not apologize, I think her very charming," and he smiled, and he tipped his hat at me.

This only served to make me even more flustered, and I promptly hid my face behind my father's coat, making him chuckle.

I did not hear the rest of the men's conversation for what felt like a long time, so concerned was I in first impressions and appearances. My heart was beating like a drum in my ears; breathing became and arduous labor, and my stomach was so full of butterflies that I felt sure they would carry me away. I was worried that I must look like such a child in his eyes, yet I was too afraid to change it. I remained in ignorance of their talk until I heard my father say, "And this my daughter, Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, though the staff has taken to calling her 'Integra' as of late."

To my surprise--and horror!--the gentleman knelt before me, and took my hand in his. "'Integra' is it?" I could feel my heart stop, and my breathing with it. I could not respond, and he seemed to sense it; smiling. "It is an honour to make your acquaintance." And with that, he kissed my hand.

No words could describe how profoundly affected I was by that simple kiss. His lips were cold, but because they belonged to him I felt a new wave of heat rise within my person. I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had never felt such questionable feelings before, and so they confused, embarrassed, and even frightened me.

The gentleman seemed to sense my discomfort, much to my mortification, smiled, chuckled, and stood up.

The gentleman and my father continued talking for some time, but I did not even attempt to follow their conversation. I did not like the gentleman then, however much I adored him. It was because of him that I felt such conflicting emotions, that I was unfamiliar with and knew not how to deal with, and so I wished for nothing more than to get away from him, even though I wanted to be near him forever.

"Perhaps we should move our conversation indoors," my father finally said. "It has been a long time since I spoke to a gentleman of my class who is so open-minded," I thought of my uncle, "and I have been craving a bottle of slivovitz since arriving in town." Slivovitz is the plum brandy of the country.

"Perhaps it would be better to go to a place where Integra is welcome," the gentleman said. He smiled kindly, and leaned down to talk to me. "The weather has been rather sultry lately, with the approach of summer; perhaps you would like a shaved ice?"

Though I was immensely flattered and delighted to be offered, I had not the slightest appetite, and felt that I would be sick if I were to eat; the butterflies in my stomach would see to that. My face grew very warm, and I imagine I blushed furiously, and I shook my head to say no.

"How very kind of you to offer, but I'm afraid we must decline," my father said, pulling out his pocket watch. "My goodness, where does the time go? If we do not leave soon, it will be dark before we reach home."

"I understand. It has been a pleasure talking to you Sir Hellsing." The gentleman and my father shook hands, and then he kneeled down to talk to me. My breathing ceased as he once again took my hand in his. "And you, Miss Integra, it has been an especially great pleasure meeting you."

I surprised myself, and him, with my boldness as I pressed his hand and said, rather loudly, "The pleasure was all mine."

My father gasped, and the gentleman chuckled. I could feel my constitution falter slightly, but I held my own as we shook hands with mutual respect.

And then the gentleman stood, tipped his hat at us both, and I heard him declare, "Until next time," before disappearing back into the crowd.

Presently the sound of grating nails and splintering wood brought me back to the present. The picture cleaner's son, who had arrived in our scloss and not Bistritz, had placed the cases in the hall, and was taken charge of by the servants till he had eaten his supper and his father had arrived. Now with assistants, and armed with hammer, ripping-chisel, and turnscrew, he began the unpacking of the cases.

Alucard sat looking listlessly on, while one after the other the old pictures, nearly all portraits, which had undergone the process of renovation, were brought to light. My mother was of an old Hungarian family, and most of these pictures, which were about to be restored to their places, had come to us through her.

My father had a list in his hand, from which he read, as the artist rummaged out the corresponding numbers. I don't know that the pictures were very good, but they were, undoubtedly, very old, and some of them very curious also. They had, for the most part, the merit of being now seen by me, I may say, for the first time; for the smoke and dust of time had all but obliterated them.

"There is a picture that I have not seen yet," said my father. "In one corner, at the top of it, is the name, as well as I could read, 'Vlad Ţepeş,' and the date '1460'; and I am curious to see how it has turned out."

I remembered it; it was the large portrait I have told you about, with the enchanting green eyes, about three and a half feet high, without a frame; but it was so blackened by age and had such a ghastly slash in the centre that I could not make it out.

The artist now produced it, with evident pride. It was quite beautiful; it was startling; it seemed to live. It was the effigy of the man we had seen in Bistritz!

"Alucard, dear, here is an absolute miracle. Here is the gentleman I have told you about, living, ready to speak, in this picture. Isn't it magnificent, Father? And see, even the mustache over his throat."

My father laughed, and said "Certainly it is a wonderful likeness," but he looked away, and to my surprise seemed but little struck by it, and went on talking to the picture cleaner, while _I_ was more and more lost in wonder the more I looked at the picture.

"Can we hang it in the drawing room, Father?" I asked.

"Certainly, dear," said he, smiling, "I'm very glad you think it so like. It must be handsomer even than I thought it, if it is."

Alucard did not add to this speech, though I thought she would; did not seem to hear it. She was leaning back in her seat, her fine eyes under their long lashes gazing on me in contemplation, and she smiled in a kind of rapture.

"And now you can read quite plainly the name that is written in the corner," said the picture cleaner, "It is not Vlad Ţepeş; it looks as if it was done in gold. The name is Vlad III Dracula, Voivode of Wallachia—though he was also called by the names Vlad III, Vlad Dracula, and Vlad Ţepeş or 'Vlad the Impaler'—and this is a little coronet over and underneath A.D. 1460. This is the earliest known portrait of Vlad the Impaler to date."

The more they spoke of him, the more lost I was in gazing at the affirmed portrait which bore a striking likeness to such a man.

Alucard slowly rose from her reclining sofa and approached. She leaned against me, wrapped her arms loosely about my waist, and rested her head delicately upon my shoulder. I could feel the fond little smile in her voice as she whispered breathlessly, "Do you not think him handsome, Integra?"

I could not look away. "Yes, I dare say he is."

She sighed softly, and said nothing else.

"Do you think it is possible," I asked, at length, "That the gentleman we met could be descended from the Draculas? To account for the likeness?"

"Ah!" said the lady, languidly, "so he might, I think, a very long descent, very ancient. Are there any Draculas living now?"

"Excuse me?" said the picture cleaner, as he was suddenly brought into our conversation.

The beautiful young lady about my shoulders, who was currently nuzzling my neck affectionately, repeated the question with fond indifference.

"None who bear the name, I believe. The family were ruined, I believe, in some civil wars, long ago, or else the blood line dwindled to naught, as is known to happen to royalty, around this part of the world; but the ruins of one of his castles are only about three miles away."

"How interesting!" she said, languidly. "But see what beautiful moonlight!" She glanced through the hall-door, which stood a little open. "Suppose we take a little ramble round the court, and look down at the road and river."

"It is so like the night you came to us," I said.

She sighed; smiling.

She rose, and each with her arm about the other's waist, we walked out upon the pavement.

In silence, slowly we walked down to the castle gate, where the beautiful landscape opened before us.

"And so you were thinking of the night I came here?" she almost whispered. "Are you glad I came?"

"Delighted, dear Alucard," I answered.

"And you asked for the picture you think like me, to hang in the drawing room," she murmured with a sigh, as she drew her arm closer about my waist, and let her pretty head sink again upon my shoulder. "Perhaps you were right to compare me to _Schneewittchen,"_ she said after a spell. "I have been in a death-like sleep for the longest time, and perhaps it will take a kiss from my true love to recall me to life."

"How romantic you are, Alucard," I said. "Whenever you tell me your story, it will be made up chiefly of some great romance."

She kissed me silently.

"I am sure, Alucard, you have been in love; that there is, at this moment, an affair of the heart going on."

"I have been in love with no one, and never shall," she whispered, "unless it should be with you."

How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!

Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled.

I cannot say that I was unaffected by her loving attention, and a gentle warmth spread in my chest as I pressed her hand with answering affection.

Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. "Darling, my darling," she murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so."

I started from her.

She was gazing on me with eyes that were full of fire and meaning, yet a face colourless and melancholic.

"Is there a chill in the air, dear?" she said drowsily. "I almost shiver; have I been dreaming?"

"You look ill, Alucard; a little faint. You certainly must take some wine," I said.

"Yes. I will. I'm better now. I shall be quite well in a few minutes. Yes, do give me a little wine," answered Alucard, as we approached the door. "Let us look again for a moment; it is the last time, perhaps, I shall see the moonlight with you."

"How do you feel now, dear Alucard? Are you really better?" I asked.

I was beginning to take alarm, lest she should have been stricken with the strange epidemic that they said had invaded the country about us.

"Father would be grieved beyond measure." I added, "If he thought you were ever so little ill, without immediately letting us know."

"And you would not be?" Alucard challenged, with an ironic smile.

"You know what I mean," I said, pressing her snow-cold hand with my own. "We have a very skilful doctor near this, the physician who was with Father the other day."

"I'm sure he is. I know how kind you all are; but, dear child, I am quite well again."

"Alucard," I insisted, "this is not like you. You are always so vivacious, so spirited, so full of life, and tonight you are so languid and apathetic."

"How kind of you to notice," she said, with a sly smile. "But really Integra, you need not worry on my behalf. There is nothing ever wrong with me, but a little weakness. But that is passing away quickly; in a moment I will be myself again. See how I have recovered."

So, indeed, she had; and she and I talked a great deal, and very animated she was; and the remainder of that evening passed without any recurrence of what I called her infatuations. I mean her crazy talk and looks, which embarrassed, and even frightened me.

But there occurred that night an event which gave my thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to startle even Alucard's careless nature into momentary attention.


	6. A Very Strange Agony

Author's Notes: I am SO SORRY this fic took so long to update, I really am!

Disclaimer: I don't own "Carmilla," _Dracula_, or _Hellsing_.

* * *

I now write, after an interval of more than ten years, with a trembling hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of certain occurrences and situations, in the ordeal through which I was unconsciously passing; though with a vivid and very sharp remembrance of the main current of my story. But, I suspect, in all lives there are certain emotional scenes, those in which our passions have been most wildly and terribly roused, that are of all others the most vaguely and dimly remembered.

As we walked toward the patio, Alucard seemed to return to her usual good humor, although still rather languid, and my uncle was waiting for us as we neared the front door.

"There you are you disrespectful little girls," my uncle said angrily, as we approached the door. "Where the devil have you been? The picture cleaner has left all ready, and you were not here to pay your respects as you ought to have been."

"Forgive us uncle, but Alucard was not feeling well, and we thought to come outside for a bit of fresh air."

"Why do you apologize, Integra, when your uncle is the one who is clearly in the wrong?" Alucard said, though she was looking at my uncle as she spoke. "Your father had no objections to our clandestine stroll, which was; in fact, much more beneficial to the visitors of this house as it gave them more space to hang the appropriate pictures in their proper places."

"You dare to speak to me so insolently," my uncle said icily, "when you are but a temporary resident in this house?"

His words struck a chord in me.

"Indeed," Alucard said cheerfully. "Once Matska sends for me, I shall leave you all for good."

"Alucard!" I cried.

"Good, I'm glad you understand," my uncle said, smiling in a way that seemed almost sinister. "Now be off with you. I have some business to discuss with my brother."

"With pleasure!" Alucard declared briskly, and led me away by the hand as my uncle left for my father's office.

"My! that uncle of yours is droll," she said carelessly, as if that awful display had not taken place. "It is a wonder your father tolerates him being in this schloss, when all he does is brood and sulk. I suppose blood relations are stronger than judgment. I should not want someone like him as my relative, though I suppose it cannot be helped. My! all this talk of blood has made me hungry. Let us go into the drawing room and have Walter bring us something to drink, I have been so craving a chocolate. Of course I am still too weak to hold the cup—my hands are so unsteady that it might spill!—so I would very much appreciate it if you would oblige me."

"Alucard," I whispered, uneasily, "Did you mean what you said?"

"Of course, I would love to have you feed me some chocolate."

"That's not what I meant. Will you really leave once your mother returns?"

"You knew I was only going to stay for a short time," Alucard said carelessly.

"That's not what I meant!" I cried, pulling my hand away. "We will always be together!"

"Oh come now, 'What one has she shall share with the other?' You know I'm getting tired of hearing that."

Her words stabbed me like a knife, especially since she had drawn our comparison with _Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot_ in the first place.

But she seemed to take no notice of this, and skipped on ahead as merrily as before. "Now, now, I'm not going to leave. Now let us retire into the drawing-room, I do long for a chocolate."

I did not move. Her indifference spurned me, and yet I could not believe, after so many declarations of affection toward myself, that she should suddenly become so careless now. I knew she loved, at least, one thing about me. "If you feel so... unbothered by it all, then kiss me once."

"Oh! Must it always come to that?" she chuckled, "I don't mind."

And she turned around and gave my lips a perfunctory lick.

My face suddenly felt very warm. I could hardly breathe.

"Rose Red," she wispered, huskily, "your true color is showing."

I said nothing. Her glaze was smouldering.

"If you really care about me," she whispered, drawing closer, twining her fingers with mine. "Then you would feed me a chocolate."

"Very well," I said, in a shaking voice. "But do not blame me if you gain weight!"

She laughed.

When we got into the drawing-room, and had sat down to our coffee and chocolate, although Alucard did not take any, because I refused to feed her, she was quite herself again. Uncle and Walter joined us, and made a little card party, in the course of which Father came in for what he called his "dish of tea."

When the game was over he sat down beside Alucard on the sofa, and asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had heard from her mother since her arrival.

She answered "No."

He then asked whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present.

"I cannot tell," she answered ambiguously, "but I have been thinking of leaving you."

The drawing-room echoed with a clatter as I nearly dropped my cup and saucer, but I recovered quickly.

"You have been already too hospitable and too kind to me," Alucard continued, as if there had not been a pause, "I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage to-morrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you."

"But you must not dream of any such thing," exclaimed my father, to my great relief. "We can't afford to lose you so, and I won't consent to your leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good as to consent to your remaining with us till she should herself return. I should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from her: but this evening the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded our neighbourhood, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful guest, I do feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother, very much. But I shall do my best; and one thing is certain, that you must not think of leaving us without her distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer too much in parting from you to consent to it easily."

"Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality," she answered, smiling slyly. "You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful chateau, under your care, and in the society of your dear daughter."

So he gallantly, in his old-fashioned way, kissed her hand, smiling and pleased at her little speech.

After dinner I felt rather ill and excused myself to my room, where I could lay down until the feeling should pass. Alucard accompanied me, and I reluctantly invited her into my room, so that she could stroke my unusually warm brow with her cool fingers, which I found rather soothing. Soon we were interrupted by the loud and insistent knocks of my uncle, who had taken personal offense against my sudden departure, and Alucard stationed herself outside my room to learn what he wanted.

"Integra? She is too preoccupied in attempting not to spill the contents of her stomach at present," Alucard said dismissively, "You will have to come back later."

"Such insolence!" my uncle barked. "I will have you know that I can speak to my niece whenever I like."

"And I will have you know," Alucard countered, "that you may speak with Integra when she is ready to hear you. It is with Sir Hellsing's permission that I reside within these walls, and so it shall be with Integra's permission that you may enter her chamber. No entry may be granted without permission. No permission granted without a request. Besides," Alucard continued in a more cheerful tone. "I would let you see her, but I am rather suspicious over the nature of Integra's illness, and I cannot allow you near her at present."

"What are you talking about?" my uncle demanded. "'The nature of Integra's illness'? Out with it! What is the matter with my niece?!"

"Well..." I heard Alucard reply ambiguously, "I believe Integra might be with child.

There was a long silence, and my stomach knotted with stress as I anticipated my uncle's reaction.

"What?!" My uncle cried, so passionately that, I do believe, the walls shook. "How can this be?! How could this have happened?! Integra with child?! I've never heard of such a thing! I should never believe it! Who on earth could the father be?! Whose child is it?!"

"It's mine," Alucard said simply.

There was an another long silence, and I felt I should die of humiliation, before my uncle flew into a rage as I have never heard, denouncing Alucard's state of mental health, accusing her of knavery, lechery and wickedness, and hurling such cruel epithets on her supposed heritage that I dare not repeat.

"I will inform Integra that you stopped by," Alucard said carelessly, "but for now, you are disturbing her peace of mind, and I must ask you to leave."

Naturally, my uncle protested, and with firm yet polite insisting and cajoling on Alucard's part, he eventually went away.

"They say," I whispered, as I finally emerged from the other room, "that one can conceive with a kiss."

"You and I both know that to be false," Alucard said, "especially with you becoming a woman soon."

"Perhaps," I agreed, "Though they say that if one loves or wishes strongly enough, it may come true."

"To believe that would be to mate griffins with horses," Alucard said. "Either science has joined Alice down the rabbit hole, or it's only nerves."

I did not answer.

Alucard stood tall and looked me in the eye. "What is it that you are so afraid of, that is making you ill?"

I couldn't answer her right away; I couldn't even look at her. "It is the fear of losing you"; but I couldn't say it; couldn't think it. I could now see that my attachment to her was deeper than hers for me. I adored Alucard so, but she did not care for me at all. How could she, for her to be able to say "I have been thinking of leaving you" so easily, as if it were the most natural thing in the world? Did I mean so little to her, after all the time we had spent together? That she would not miss me at all? I could feel tears begin to well into my eyes. I could not stand to think such things, I could hardly bear it.

"Be strong," Alucard said firmly.

My eyes burned at the command.

"Be strong," she repeated more gently.

My throat tightened as I struggled to hold back s sob.

"If you can be strong," Alucard continued, her little hands placed delicately on either side of my face, "then you, your everything, all of you will be mine."

My constitution broke as I wept freely into her arms, and she wove her tiny fingers into my hair, and her warm breath glowed upon my throat as she cried, "All of you will be mine!"

She kissed me, and for the first time, I had no intention of pulling away.

I accompanied Alucard as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed.

"Do you think," I said at length, "that you will ever confide fully in me?"

She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only continued to smile on me.

"You won't answer that?" I said. "You can't answer pleasantly; I ought not to have asked you."

"You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You do not know how dear you are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to look for. But I am under vows, no nun half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me, and _hating_ me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature."

"Now, Alucard, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again," I said hastily.

"Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for your sake I'll talk like a sage."

She feigned difficulty with a button so that I may help her undress. "Were you ever in a war?"

"No; how you do run on. What is it like? How terrible it must be."

"I almost forget, it is years ago."

I scoffed.

"You are not so old, and wars are not so trivial. Your first battle can hardly be forgotten yet."

"I remember everything it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture, and made its colours faint. I was all but assassinated in my home, wounded _here_," she touched her throat, "and never was the same since."

"Were you near dying?"

"Yes, very—a cruel love—strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel so lazy. How can I get up just now and lock my door?"

She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich long hair, under her cheek, her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes followed me wherever I moved, with a kind of shy smile that I could not decipher.

I bid her good night, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation.

I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers. _I_ certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawing-room to attend our brief evening prayers in the hall.

If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our careless talks that she had been baptized, I should have doubted her being a Christian. Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her speak a word. If I had known the world better, this particular neglect or antipathy would not have so much surprised me.

The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had adopted Alucard's habit of locking her bedroom door, having taken into my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling assassins. I added one step further of her precaution by making a brief search through my room, to satisfy myself that no lurking assassin or robber was "ensconced."

These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, and which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with.

Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.

I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony.

I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep. But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous dog. It appeared to me about four or five feet long for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I saw six eyes red as blood snap open just as I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted deep into my breast.

I woke with a scream. The room was lighted by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a tall male figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right side. It was in a dark loose coat, and its hair was down and covered its shoulders. A block of stone could not have been more still. There was not the slightest stir of respiration. As I stared at it, the figure appeared to have changed its place, and was now nearer the door; then, close to it, the door opened, and it passed out.

I was now relieved, and able to breathe and move. My first thought was that Alucard had been playing me another trick, perhaps this time with the assistance of Walter—as she had often talked of doing—and that I had forgotten to secure my door. I hastened to it, and found it locked as usual on the inside. I was afraid to open it—I was horrified. I sprang into my bed and covered my head up in the bedclothes, and lay there more dead than alive till morning.


	7. Descending

Author's Notes: Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good fic!

Disclaimer: I do not own "Carmilla", _Dracula_, _Hellsing_ or Santa Clause. (But if I did, there would be some changes around here.)

* * *

It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which, even now, I recall the occurrence of that night. It was no such transitory terror as a dream leaves behind it. It seemed to deepen by time, and communicated itself to the room and the very furniture that had encompassed the apparition.

I could not bear next day to be alone for a moment. I should have told my father, but for two opposite reasons. At one time I thought he would laugh at my story, and I could not bear its being treated as a jest; and at another I thought he might fancy that I had been attacked by the mysterious complaint which had invaded our neighborhood. I had myself no misgiving of the kind, and as he had been rather an invalid for some time, I was afraid of alarming him.

I was comfortable enough with my good-natured butler, Walter, and even my brooding uncle Richard. They both perceived that I was out of spirits and nervous, and at length I told them what lay so heavy at my heart.

My uncle scoffed, but I fancied that Walter looked anxious.

After Alucard's jest the night before, my uncle suspected that it had been my lover I spoke of, the one who was the father of my natural child, and when I told him passionately—with tears in my eyes, I dare say—that that had not been the case, Walter soothed me and assured that he believed every word I said.

"By-the-by," said Walter, smiling, "I suppose it should be a comfort for you to know the long lime tree walk, behind Alucard's bedroom window, is haunted."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed my uncle, who probably thought the theme rather inopportune, "and who tells that story?"

"Martin says that he came up twice, when the old yard gate was being repaired, before sunrise, and twice saw the same tall male figure walking down the lime tree avenue."

"So he well might, as long as there are livestock to tend in the river fields," said my uncle.

"I dare say; but Martin chooses to be frightened, and never did I see fool more frightened."

"You must not say a word about it to Alucard, because she can see down that walk from her room window," I interposed, "and she is, if possible, a greater entrepreneur than I. She would walk right down that walk from her window, unattended, just to catch a glance at the phantom.

"And who knows what ruffians might be prowling about at night?" Walter added. "Never mind the existence of phantoms."

"Exactly," I agreed, "so we cannot risk loosing her to her own daring."

Alucard came down rather later than usual that day.

"I was so frightened last night," she said, so soon as were together, "and I am sure I should have done something dreadful if it had not been for that charm I bought from the poor little hunchback whom I called such hard names. I had a dream of being something black coming round your bed, and I awoke in a perfect horror, and I really thought for some seconds I saw your terrified face looking at mine, but I felt under my coat for my charm, and the moment my fingers touched it your face disappeared, and I felt quite certain I would have throttled you, as I did those poor people we heard of, only that I had it by me."

This did not alarm me completely, for Alucard often had many strange dreams of being anything from a wolf, mist to bats. And she dreamed of having many such adventures in those forms as well, flying along the Borgo Pass or shifting through key holes, having strange encounters with unknown village folk and daring adventures with traveling gypsies in the area. Still, her vivid narrative did draw out a small shudder from myself.

"Well, listen to me," I began, and recounted my adventure, at the recital of which she appeared horrified.

"And had you the charm near you?" she asked, earnestly.

"No, I had dropped it into a china vase in the drawing room, but I shall certainly take it with me tonight, as you have so much faith in it."

At this distance of time I cannot tell you, or even understand how I overcame my horror so effectually as to lie alone in my room that night. I remember distinctly that I pinned the charm to my pillow. I fell asleep almost immediately, and slept even more soundly than usual all night.

Next night I passed as well. My sleep was delightfully deep and dreamless.

But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which, however, did not exceed a degree that was almost luxurious.

"Well, I told you so," said Alucard, when I described my quiet sleep, "I had such delightful sleep myself last night; I pinned the charm to the breast of my nightdress. It was too far away the night before. I am quite sure it was all fancy, except the dreams. I used to think that evil spirits made dreams, but my doctor told me it is no such thing. Only a fever passing by, or some other malady, as they often do, he said, knocks at the door, and not being able to get in, passes on, with that alarm."

"And what do you think the charm is?" said I.

"It has been fumigated or immersed in some drug, and is an antidote against the malaria," she answered.

"Then it acts only on the body?"

"Certainly; you don't suppose that evil spirits are frightened by bits of ribbon, or the perfumes of a druggist's shop? No, these complaints, wandering in the air, begin by trying the nerves, and so infect the brain, but before they can seize upon you, the antidote repels them. That I am sure is what the charm has done for us. It is nothing magical, it is simply natural."

I should have been happier if I could have quite agreed with Alucard, but I did my best, and the impression was a little losing its force.

For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and ideas that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome, possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet.

Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

I would not admit that I was ill; I would not consent to tell my father, or to have the doctor sent for.

Alucard became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange paroxysms of languid adoration more frequent.

"My darling, you look absolutely _dreadful_," She would say, gloating on me with increasing ardor the more my strength and spirits waned.

"I am pleased to find that my dwindling energy has created such amusement for you," I would say, unable to force myself to use the word _health_. I suppose, in hind sight, some part of me was still terrified of my father sending for the special doctor that haunted my childhood.

"Amusement? Oh no, dear Integra, nothing could be further from the truth." Alucard would say, holding my cold hand with her white one and kissing my knuckles gleefully. "How can I be pleased when your natural warmth has rescinded to frost, and your rich complexion withered like a rose at the first touch of winter? A rose does thrive in the summer, yet wilts at the first touch of winter, and the winter is everlastingly in his repetative attempt to take the flowers for his own, yet the rose, unable to withstand the harsh winter's rough caresses, never does last."

"What are you saying, Alucard?" I would ask, in barely a whisper.

"What am I saying?" she would reply, with her heated eyes focused so intently on mine. "Is that the winter adores the flowers and wishes to have one of his own, and yet the flower cannot survive the winter, for it is her nature. If the rose is not equipped to withstand the winter, then the rose must be plucked and preserved—no, immortalized!—like a flower in a book so she may retain her beauty, and last with the winter forever."

When she spoke to me thus, I had the terrible feeling she beheld me as that very flower to be "plucked and preserved" for her own enjoyment.

This always shocked me like a momentary glare of insanity.

Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the strangest illness under which mortal ever suffered. There was an unaccountable fascination in its earlier symptoms that more than reconciled me to the incapacitating effect of that stage of the malady. This fascination increased for a time, until it reached a certain point, when gradually a sense of the horrible mingled itself with it, deepening, as you shall hear, until it discolored and perverted the whole state of my life.

The first change I experienced was rather agreeable. It was very near the turning point from which began the descent of Avernus.

Certain vague and strange sensations visited me in my sleep. The prevailing one was of that pleasant, peculiar cold thrill which we feel in bathing, when we move against the current of a river. This was soon accompanied by dreams that seemed interminable, and were so vague that I could never recollect their scenery and persons, or any one connected portion of their action. But they left an awful impression, and a sense of exhaustion, as if I had passed through a long period of great mental exertion and danger.

After all these dreams there remained on waking a remembrance of having been in a place very nearly dark, and of having spoken to people whom I could not see; and especially of one clear voice, of a female's, very deep, that spoke as if at a distance, slowly, and producing always the same sensation of indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometime there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious.

It was now three weeks since the commencement of this unaccountable state.

My sufferings had, during the last week, told upon my appearance. I had grown pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and the languor which I had long felt began to display itself in my countenance.

My father asked me often whether I was ill; but, with an obstinacy which now seems to me unaccountable, I persisted in assuring him that I was quite well.

In a sense this was true. I had no pain, I could complain of no bodily derangement. My complaint seemed to be one of the imagination or the nerves, and, horrible as my sufferings were, I kept them very nearly to myself with a morbid reserve.

It could not be that terrible complaint which the peasants called the oupire, for I had now been suffering for three weeks, and they were seldom ill for much more than three days, when death put an end to their miseries.

Alucard complained of dreams and feverish sensations, but by no means of so alarming a kind as mine. I say that mine were extremely alarming. Had I been capable of comprehending my condition, I would have invoked aid and advice on my knees. The narcotic of an unsuspected influence was acting upon me, and my perceptions were benumbed.

I am going to tell you now of a dream that led immediately to an odd discovery.

One night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in the dark, I heard one, deep and tender, and at the same time terrible, which said, "Your father warned you to beware the Empire." At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw the gentleman from Bistritz, standing near the foot of my bed, in naught but dirty old trousers, bathed, from his chin to his feet, in one great stain of blood.

I wakened with a shriek, possessed with the one idea that Alucard was being murdered. I remember springing from my bed, and my next recollection is that of standing on the lobby, crying for help.

Walter and a maid came scurrying out of their rooms in alarm; a lamp burned always on the lobby, and seeing me, they soon learned the cause of my terror.

I insisted on our knocking at Alucard's door. Our knocking was unanswered.

It soon became a pounding and an uproar. We shrieked her name, but all was vain.

We all grew frightened, for the door was locked. Walter hurried back to my room and rang the bell quickly and earnestly. If my father's room had been at that side of the house, we would have called him up at once to our aid. But, alas! he was quite out of hearing, and to reach him involved an excursion for which we none of us had time.

Servants, however, soon came running up the stairs; and having renewed as fruitlessly our summons at Alucard's door, I ordered the men to force the lock. They did so, and we stood in the doorway, holding our lights aloft, and so stared into the room.

We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We looked round the room. Everything was undisturbed. It was exactly in the state in which I had left it on bidding her good night. But Alucard was gone.


	8. The Doctor

Author's Notes: All grammatical errors, except for the doctor's, have been fixed and reposted.

Disclaimer: I do not own Carmilla, Dracula or Hellsing; they already belong to other people.

* * *

At sight of the room, perfectly undisturbed except for our violent entrance, we began to cool a little, and soon recovered our senses sufficiently to dismiss the servants. It had struck Walter that possibly Alucard had been awakened by the uproar at her door, and in her first panic had jumped from her bed, and hid herself in a press, or behind a curtain, from which she could not, of course, emerge until the majordomo and his myrmidons had withdrawn.

"Now, does that sound like me at all?" came a familiar, pretty voice.

Startled, we all three simply stood there in stunned silence for a moment or so, unable to believe what we were hearing. Then, sufficiently recovering our senses, we rushed to the open window from which the voice had emerged--and found Alucard standing behind her curtains.

I was astounded. I could not believe my eyes. She beckoned me to her with her pretty finger, in silence. Her face expressed great amusement.

I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy; I kissed and embraced her again and again.

"Dear Alucard, what has become of you all this time? We have been in agonies of anxiety about you," I exclaimed.

"This night has been a night of wonders," she said.

"For mercy's sake, explain all you can."

"When I parted with you earlier this evening," she said, "I went to sleep as usual in my bed, with my doors locked, that of the dressing-room, and that opening upon the gallery. My sleep was uninterrupted, and, as far as I know, dreamless. I was roused, however, by what appeared to be the face of a dear friend of mine, from before I came to live in your charming schloss, beyond the window. Curious, I opened the window to see if there was any proof of such an apartition; and, when I did not find any, I stepped on to the roof to search more efficiently. I should have immediately gone back inside, however, I caught a glimps of the beautiful full moon, and time got away from me."

"Stop talking nonsense!" my uncle barked. "And answer my niece when you are addressed. Where have you been, and why did you not answer?"

"As I have told you," Alucard said, "if you had the mind to listen. I was not in my room, I was taking an evening walk about the roof, outside my window; and I did not have sufficient time to reply, until you very rudely tore down my door."

"You were wandering outside?" Walter said, incredulously.

"Of course," Alucard replied, matter-of-factly. "It is such a nice night that I thought it fit to."

"Watch the moon from the roof?" my uncle repeated, incredulously, "then why the bugger didn't you answer us before?!"

"Perhaps if you had not been concerned with screaming my name at the top of your voices repeatedly, so that I may not be able to answer, you would have heard my replies _before_ thinking it necessary to break in like a pack of burglars," Alucard replied.

"'Like a pack of burglars?'" my uncle repeated, again, insulted. "How dare you call us such, when it is _you_—"

"At any rate, we are very pleased to find you unharmed," Walter said, before my uncle could say anything more. "And I hope you may accept our most humble apologies for breaking in, in such a savage manner."

"Certainly," Alucard replied, quite charmingly. "I do not mind at all. It is good to be reminded of one's worth."

She winked at me, and I blushed.

As Alucard would not hear of an attendant sleeping in her room, Walter arranged that she should sleep in a room down the hall, at least for the time being. This new room, of course, would have the desired lock and key our fair guest could not sleep without, and no working window which she could escape through. A servant would also sleep outside her door, so that she would not attempt to make another such excursion without being arrested at her own door.

That night passed quietly; and the next morning early, my father inquired about the faint noise he had heard as coming from our part of the schloss the night before. When we informed him of my dream, and subsequent search for Alucard, he immediately became worried, and enquired after her well-being. After Alucard assured him, repeatedly, that she was perfectly fine, and it was all a misunderstanding, my father was greatly relieved.

"One thing puzzles me, Integra," my father said. "How is it that your nightmare about the gentleman from Bistritz immediately led you to think of Alucard?"

"Well, I. . ." I searched my memory for a reason, slowly. "I cannot say. They both seem so similar, and they are from the same blood line, so. . ."

"It is because Integra is an angel," Alucard answered for me, taking my hand in hers. "When she thought of one person being hurt, the gentleman you speak of so often as of meeting in Bistritz; she saw fit to immediately inquire for the well-being of another; I, who struggle nightly with the very real fear of being murdered in my sleep. And I must say, she was very right to do so. What a treasure your daughter is."

Alucard was looking charmingly. Nothing could be more beautiful than her tints. Her beauty was, I think, enhanced by that graceful languor that was peculiar to her. I think my father was silently contrasting her looks with mine, for he said:

"I wish my poor Integra was looking more like herself, though," and he sighed.

And so our alarms were happily ended, with Alucard restored to her friends.

I stayed by Alucard's side far more dutifully from then on after, though I could not figure why. I could hardly bear to part with her during the evenings, for reasons I could not understand, and inquired often on her feeling of security before leaving her for bed, though her new room had a lock to keep strangers out. She took great amusement in my worrying, as was her nature, and was awake earlier than usual when I went up to see her the following morning.

On my way to preparing an early chocolate for Alucard, I encountered my uncle in the drawing room, pacing in an agitated manner, and barking orders to various servants in a shorter temper than usual.

"Is everything all right, uncle?" I asked.

"All right?" my uncle repeated, sarcastically. "All right? Of course everything is all right; if you find being accosted by the arrival of a thief and a blackguard for the first time in twenty blasted years 'all right'!" Suddenly my uncle turned from me and barked, "Where is my coffee?!"

"I am terribly sorry for such an occurrence," I began, but promptly quieted as my uncle shrieked to a servant that his coffee was too bitter.

"Of course, you would think that, wouldn't you?" he sneered, "With the way he has been carrying on all these years—the devil take you, get out of my sight!—you would think he is dead. But no, that cannot be the case. I should be so lucky! At the rate he is going, that old bastard will never die!"

"I do not understand—"

But my uncle threw his coffee mug to the ground, effectively ending our conversation.

"Of course," Alucard said, when I told her about it straight away, "but what did you expect? Your uncle is angry about everything."

"I know," I said, "But he seemed so much more upset than usual." Alucard snorted, as if this were unlikely. "I just wish I knew what the problem was. I have rarely seen him so angry."

"The problem is that your uncle is a miserable man," Alucard said carelessly, allowing her pretty head to drape over my shoulder. "And miserable people can never find happinesss with others, or themselves. You can try for a hundred years, but ultimately, your uncle simply cannot find contentment or appreciation in anything that anyone says or does for him."

"I suppose you're right," I said, though I could not be as confident as her.

"Oh! Come now Integra," Alucard said, playfully tickling my sides. "Why do you look so gloom? You know that _I_ can never find unhappiness in your presence."

"Alucard! Stop!" I laughed, and tried to flee from her, though I was still rather fatigued. Alucard followed easily behind, chasing me, and grabbing at me periodically as I writhed to get away from her torturous fingers. I sought to escape Alucard with the assistance of gravity down the stairs, but nearly fell from laughter, and Alucard supported me by the arm. We continued to giggle, when Alucard spotted something past the doorway, and stopped abruptly.

Confused, I looked in the direction she was staring, and noticed a stranger sitting, with his back turned from us, in the library.

Alucard did not move. She stood rigid as a stone, her green eyes now flashing that terrifying red, and her pretty lips compressed into a tight, thin line. Without saying a word, she turned around, and marched back the way we had come.

Before I could follow Alucard, or inquire as to what was troubling her, I encountered Walter, who informed me that there was a doctor I must call on immediately. Good manners and etiquette won over, though I was determined to see Alucard again as soon as I was able to.

Walter accompanied me to the library; and there the grave doctor, with white hair and spectacles, whom I mentioned before, was waiting to receive me. I knew at once who he was; even before my father, who was to arrive later, told me. Their resemblance was striking, even with the noticeable age difference.

His grave expression melted into a warm smile as he rose to greet me.

"Ah, my dear miss," he said, kissing my hand. "And so this is the Fraulein I hear so much about; the young daughter of my foolish Arthur, by your manner and dress. Ha! But not foolish at all, I see by the brightness in your eyes. There is much mother blood in you; with the same dark roustabout bravery of the locals. Very aptly your father name you 'Integral.' The best of all worlds, I am please to meet you at last."

Despite everything, I found myself liking this strange doctor. He was very old, and very tall, and spoke in a foreign accent, which I could only conjecture as coming from Amsterdam. Because of this, his English was rather stinted, though I did not think it proper to inform him that he may speak his native German. for fear offending him. Despite his genial smile, he had a very powerful presence, which I could only tremble and nod as I stared into his hauntingly blue eyes, eyes I had seen so often in a mirror; and knew, for the first time, where I inherited my own eyes from.

There were so many questions I wished to ask him; but, seeing as he was the doctor, and I the patient, it was his right to speak first.

"My dear young miss, I have the so great pleasure because you are so much beloved. That is much, my dear, even were there that which I do not see. They told me you were down in the spirit, and that you were of a ghastly pale. To them I say "Pouf!" He snapped his fingers at Walter, in a way that made me laugh. "So, my dear, we will send him away to prepare tea in the kitchens, whiles you and I have little talk all to ourselves."

I told him my story, and as I proceeded he grew graver and graver.

We were standing, he and I, in the recess of one of the windows, facing one another. When my statement was over, he leaned with his shoulders against the wall, and with his eyes fixed on me earnestly, with an interest in which there was a dash of horror.

After a minute's reflection, he asked Walter if he could see my father.

He was sent for accordingly, and as he entered, smiling, he said:

"I dare say, doctor, you are going to tell me that I am an old fool for having brought you here; I hope I am."

But his smile faded into shadow as the doctor, with a very grave face, beckoned him to him.

He and the doctor talked for some time in the same recess where I had just conferred with the physician. It seemed an earnest and argumentative conversation. The room was very large, and I and Walter stood together, burning with curiosity, at the farther end. Not a word could we hear, however, for they spoke in a very low tone, and the deep recess of the window quite concealed the doctor from view, and very nearly my father, whose foot, arm, and shoulder only could we see; and the voices were, I suppose, all the less audible for the sort of closet which the thick wall and window formed.

After a time my father's face looked into the room; it was pale, thoughtful, and, I fancied, agitated.

"Integra, dear, come here for a moment. Walter, we shan't trouble you, the doctor says, at present."

Accordingly I approached, for the first time a little alarmed; for, although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please.

My father held out his hand to me, as I drew near, but he was looking at the doctor, and he said:

"It certainly is very odd; I don't understand it quite. Integra, come here, dear; now attend to Doctor Abraham Van Helsing, and recollect yourself."

"There is no need to be frightened, dear Integra," the doctor said, reassuringly. "I need that I may ask just one or two questions, that so I may not chance to miss nothing. You mention a sensation of two needles piercing the skin, somewhere around your neck, on the night when you experience your first horrible dream. Is there still any soreness?"

"None at all," I answered.

"Can you show with your finger the point you think this has occur?"

"Very little below my throat—_here_," I answered.

I wore a morning dress, which covered the place I pointed to.

"Now you can satisfy yourself," said the doctor. "You will not mind your papa to lower your dress a very little? It is necessary, to detect a symptom of the complaint which you have been suffering."

I acquiesced. It was only an inch or two below the edge of my collar.

"God bless me!—so it is," exclaimed my father, growing pale.

"You see it now with your own eyes," said the doctor, with an ironic triumph.

"What is it?" I exclaimed, beginning to be frightened.

"Nothing, my dear young lady, but a small blue spot the size of the tip of your little finger. And now," he continued, turning to my father, "the question is what is best to be done?"

"Is there any danger?" I urged, in great trepidation.

"I trust not, my dear Integra," answered the doctor, with a smile, and a pat to my head. "I see not why you should not recover. I see not why you should not begin to get better _immediately_. That is the point the sense of strangulation begins?"

"Yes," I answered.

"And—remember as best you can—the same point was a centre of thrill which you describe just now, like the current of a cold stream running against you?"

"It may have been; I think it was."

"Ay, you see?" he added, turning to my father. "Shall I say a word to Walter?"

"Certainly," said my father.

He called Walter to him, and said:

"I find the young lady far from well. It is not of great consequence, I hope; but it is necessary to take some steps, which I explain soon. But in the meantime, Walter, you will be good as not to let Miss Integra be alone for one moment. That is the only direction I need give for the present. It is indispensable."

"We may rely upon your kindness, Walter, I know," added my father.

Walter satisfied them obediently.

"And you, dear Integra, I know you will observe the doctor's direction."

"I shall have to ask your opinion upon another patient," my father said, "whose symptoms slightly resemble those of my daughter, that have just been detailed to you—very much milder in degree, but I believe quite of the same sort. She is a young lady—our guest; but as you say you will be passing this way again this evening, you can't do better than take your supper here, and you can then see her. She does not come down till the afternoon."

"I thank you," said the doctor. "I shall be with you, then, about seven this evening."

And then they repeated their directions to me and to Walter, and with this parting charge my father left us, and walked out with the doctor; and I saw them pacing together up and down between the road and the moat, on the grassy platform in front of the castle, evidently absorbed in earnest conversation.

The doctor did not return. I saw him mount his horse there, take his leave, and ride away eastward through the forest.

Nearly at the same time I saw the man arrive from Bistritz with the letters, and dismount and hand the bag to my father.

In the meantime, Walter and I were both busy, lost in conjecture as to the reasons of the singular and earnest direction which the doctor and my father had concurred in imposing. Walter was afraid the doctor apprehended a sudden seizure, and that, without prompt assistance, I might either lose my life in a fit, or at least be seriously hurt.

The interpretation did not strike me. I fancied, perhaps luckily for my nerves, that the arrangement was prescribed simply to secure a companion, who would prevent my taking too much exercise, or eating unripe fruit, or doing any of the fifty foolish things to which young people are supposed to be prone.

"Of course," Alucard said, when I told her about it. "Most men would rather let a woman die of an illness than inform her of what her ailment is, so that she may take steps to recover for herself, but rather to fade in ignorance of what the condition is."

Alucard was sitting on her bed, facing away from me, when I went up to see her. Her arms were folded over her knees, which were drawn up to her chin and her pretty cheek resting delicately between her elbows; her long black hair, which was let down, was covering her face, back and shoulders like a dark shroud. She seemed so sad and frail, for the first time since I met her.

"Are you all right?" I asked her, as I crawled onto the bed and wrapped my arms gently around her from behind.

"Why did he come?" she asked, after a long time. "Everything was going so well--why did he have to come now?"

"It is his job, Alucard," I said, confused by her strange, yet heart-breaking words. "He is a doctor, after all, and my father made a special request on my account for him to come and see me. Walter says that he drew away from business in Piteşti to call on me today."

"Of course," Alucard said, with more bitterness than I could bear. "It is not until you are dying that that old goat makes time to see you."

"I am sure it is not that serious," I said, alarmed by her use of the word 'death.' "And I am sure he would have come sooner if--"

"If what?" Alucard asked, looking at me now. "If you were colder? Paler? With chills? With a fever? On your deathbed? Some grandfather he is—he waits until the last descendent of his bloodline is nearly cut before he decides to come and make amends. You didn't even know he was _alive_ before he saw fit to come to you today."

"Alucard, that's not fair," I said. "Doctor Abraham Van Helsing is a busy man, and this is because he knows what he talks about better than any one else. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day; and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind. Surely someone as brilliant as he has been sought after ceaselessly, and if he had a moment to spare, I'm sure he would have--"

"Wake up Integra!" Alucard cried suddenly. "He does not care about you! None of them do! You are not a person in this household! You are a pet--a doll. That is what you are in their eyes. A little doll child to be played with and placed in a corner when they are bored of you. How often have they made time—between business, travel, and political talk—to pay any attention to you? How often have you seen your grandfather when your very _existence_ was not on the line? If he truly loved you, he would have come to see you sooner as _I_ have—"

She was silent then, gasped as if she had said too much, and turned away from me in an instant. There was a long silence between us.

"How could you say such a thing?" I asked, finally, with tears rolling out of my eyes. "How could you say something so cruel?"

"You must forgive me, Integra," Alucard said, at last, without facing me. "I am not myself today. You must go and tend to your father, for I will need to be alone for a while."

Slowly, I rose to do as Alucard wished. I paused, hesitantly at the door, but Alucard would not look back, and I shut the door gently behind me.

I waited in the drawing-room, with much on my mind. About half an hour later my father came in—he had a letter in his hand—and said:

"This letter had been delayed; it is from General Spielsdorf. He might have been here yesterday, he may not come till to-morrow or he may be here to-day."

He put the open letter into my hand; but he did not look pleased, as he used when a guest, especially one so much loved as the General, was coming. On the contrary, he looked as if he wished him at the bottom of the Red Sea. There was plainly something on his mind which he did not choose to divulge. Alucard's words swam in my head more persistently than fish in a small pond, and I could not ignore them any longer.

"Father, darling, will you tell me this?" said I, suddenly laying my hand on his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face.

"Perhaps," he answered, smoothing my hair caressingly over my eyes.

"Does the doctor think me very ill?"

"No, dear; he thinks, if right steps are taken, you will be quite well again, at least, on the high road to a complete recovery, in a day or two," he answered, a little dryly. "I wish our good friend, the General, had chosen any other time; that is, I wish you had been perfectly well to receive him."

"But do tell me, father," I insisted, "_what_ does he think is the matter with me?"

"Nothing; you must not plague me with questions," he answered, with more irritation than I ever remember him to have displayed before. Seeing that I looked wounded, he kissed me, and added, "You shall know all about it in a day or two; that is, all that I know. In the meantime you are not to trouble your head about it."

He turned and left the room, but came back before I had done wondering and puzzling over the oddity of all this. It was merely to say that he was going to the ruined castle across the way, and had ordered the carriage to be ready at twelve, and that I and my uncle should accompany him. He was going to see the priest who lived near those picturesque grounds, upon business. As Alucard had never seen them, she could follow with Walter when she came down, who would bring materials for what you call a picnic, which might be laid for us in the ruined schloss.

At twelve o'clock, accordingly, I was ready; and not long after, my father, my uncle and I set out upon our projected drive.

Passing the castle gate we turned to the right, and followed the road that leads down the straight and narrow of the Pass, westward, to reach the ruined castle that was so near to our home.

No rural drive can be fancied prettier. As one nears the deserted schloss, the ground breaks into gentle hills and hollows all clothed with beautiful wood, totally destitute of the comparative formality which artificial planting and early culture and pruning impart.

The irregularities of the ground often lead the road out of its course, and cause it to wind beautifully round the sides of broken hollows and the steeper sides of the hills, among varieties of ground almost inexhaustible.

Turning one of these points, we suddenly encountered our old friend, the General, riding towards us, attended by a mounted servant. His portmanteaus were following in a hired wagon, such as we term a cart.

The General dismounted as we pulled up, and, after the usual greetings, was easily persuaded to accept the vacant seat in the carriage and send his horse on with his servant to the schloss.


	9. Bereaved

Author's Notes: Finally, the backstory to Seras Victoria. I can't wait. ^^

Disclaimer: If I made any money off of this fic, do you think I would use any materials from "Carmilla," _Dracula_ or _Hellsing_? I thought not.

* * *

It was about ten months since we had last seen General Spielsdorf: but that time had sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance. He had grown thinner; something of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that cordial serenity which used to characterize his features. His dark blue eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his shaggy grey eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually induces, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in bringing it about.

Since my uncle never did get on with the General, their each possessing between them two stubborn personalities that would clash horribly when any subject of opinion was brought up, he opted to exit the carriage, and go on with the servant back to our schloss. He decided to meet us with Walter and Alucard later at the ruins; effectively leaving my father and I alone with our companion.

We had not long resumed our drive, when the General began to talk, with his usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement, as he termed it, which he had sustained in the death of his beloved niece and ward; and he then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing against the "hellish arts" to which she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell.

My father, who saw at once that something very extraordinary had befallen, asked him, if not too painful to him, to detail the circumstances which he thought justified the strong terms in which he expressed himself.

"I should tell you all with pleasure," said the General, "but you would not believe me."

"Why should I not?" he asked.

"Because," he answered testily, "you believe in nothing but what consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remember when I was like you, but I have learned better."

"Try me," said my father; "I am not such a dogmatist as you suppose. Besides which, I very well know that you generally require proof for what you believe, and am, therefore, very strongly predisposed to respect your conclusions."

"You are right in supposing that I have not been led lightly into a belief in the marvelous—for what I have experienced is marvelous—and I have been forced by extraordinary evidence to credit that which ran counter, diametrically, to all my theories. I have been made the dupe of a preternatural conspiracy."

Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the General's penetration, I saw my father, at this point, glance at the General with a marked suspicion of his sanity.

The General did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening before us.

"You are going to the Ruins of Dracula?" he said. "Yes, it is a lucky coincidence; do you know I was going to ask you to bring me there to inspect them. I have a special object in exploring. There is a ruined chapel, ain't there, with a great many tombs of that extinct family?"

"So there are—highly interesting," said my father. "I hope you are thinking of claiming the title and estates?"

My father said this gaily, but the General did not recollect the laugh, or even the smile, which courtesy exacts for a friend's joke; on the contrary, he looked grave and even fierce, ruminating on a matter that stirred his anger and horror.

"Something very different," he said, gruffly. "I mean to unearth some of those fine people. I hope, by God's blessing, to accomplish a pious sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain monsters, and enable honest people to sleep in their beds without being assailed by murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such as I myself would have scouted as incredible a few months since."

My father looked at him again, but this time not with a glance of suspicion—with an eye, rather, of keen intelligence and alarm.

"The house of Dracula," father said, "has been long extinct: a hundred years at least. My dear wife was maternally descended from the Draculas. But the name and title have long ceased to exist. The castle is a ruin; the very village is deserted; it is fifty years since the smoke of a chimney was seen there; not a roof left."

"Quite true. I have heard a great deal about that since I last saw you; a great deal that will astonish you. But I had better relate everything in the order in which it occurred," said the General. "You saw my dear ward—my child, I may call her. No creature could have been more beautiful, and only three months ago none more blooming."

"Yes, poor thing! When I saw her last she certainly was quite lovely," said my father.

"Yes, a great beauty, a great beauty," the General agreed, bitterly. "Not at all like those sheltered flowers, planted and primed in the careful shelter of a watchful garden, but one of those wild beauties you see as blooming in the most harsh and desolate places, in times of war, famine, disease, and other such savage locations where you least expect it."

My father, hastening to make up for the unintentional insult the General had blown upon me, asked at once what he meant.

"You remember, I spoke once of my dear sister, who was the mother of my niece." The General said, after a long silence, which, I fancied, he used to gather his thoughts for an appropriate explanation.

My father nodded gravely.

"She was sixteen years my junior, and because pf this, she and I were never, as you might say, close. But she was a very strong gentlewoman; and perhaps it was because of this harshness of spirit that she did not marry until long after her prime. It is amazing that she could find anyone who would take her as she was; yet she claimed afterward that the matrimony was for love. She married a fine officer from England, who saw fit to settle in the good land of Transylvania, much like you, my good friend."

My father was duly flattered.

I was listening eagerly. An English father and a native mother; Seras and I had more in common with each other than I had originally thought possible. I felt a stab of pain in my heart, however, at remembering that I would never get a chance to meet her.

"They settled in a small estate far south of here, and were married for many years before they produced a single child; my darling niece, Seras Victoria." The General took a long moment to compose himself, and carried on. "It was very tragic, you know, what happened to them last spring. Horrible business, their being found murdered in their own home, with their only child found locked away in a cupboard in the next room, supposedly by her mother for her own protection. . . She could only cry about it afterwards, saying, 'He dug too deep! He dug too deep into their wallets!' No doubt some of those Slavic roustabouts come to murder their own master over a disagreement in payment! If I only knew where to find them; if only I knew what they looked like, I would have. . ."

"I was grieved and shocked more than I can tell you, my dear friend; I knew what a blow it was to you."

He took the General's hand, and they exchanged a kind pressure. Tears gathered in the old soldier's eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He said:

"For how much I grew to love her, my niece did not trust me in the least when she first came to live in my estate, nor anyone else. I suppose the true weight of the tragedy was still potent on her little mind. She chose to remain near the maids, helping them to fold laundry, and go about their chores, and so on; casting haunted glances toward any manservant or gentleman who would come too near to her. I told her that it was unseemly for a lady of her rank to fraternize with the help like a common chambermaid; but it was not until I thought it fit to hire a governess did she cease her ways."

"Indeed," my father nodded, emphatically. "I must confess I underwent the very same difficulty with Integra, at first, in regards to servant children. If it had not been for my good butler, Walter C. Dornez, I fear by now she would have fallen down the path to ruin."

In response to the General's astonished gaze, I cast my eyes down, and blushed shamefully.

"This surprises me," the General said, to my father, "for I had always believed your daughter to be a perfect model of a lady."

"Indeed," my father said, "You may find no fault within my upbringing, or that of my late wife's noble bloodline. I suppose it is just one of the fifty foolish things young people are prone to."

I did not have the heart to admit that I did not remember my childhood very well; but, I supposed, it must have been something akin to loneliness and want of companionship that drove me to seek out my peers, regardless of our differences in social standing.

"Aye, I did have the same trouble with Seras," the General admitted. "Before the governess, she would run wild through the halls and the grounds among the tenants' children, playing games of war, and tag, and hide, and seek like a common urchin. No matter how often I reproached her, told her it was unseemly, informed her of the many more productive uses of her time, such as learning the piano forte and drawing, she would continue to do so anyway, claiming that she had a score to settle with this or that; and indeed, she was a natural-born leader and trouble-maker."

My father simply nodded as he waited for the general to go on.

"There was one boy," the general said, through gritted teeth, "that she insisted on fraternizing with above all else, including her own governesses. He was a real trouble-maker—the bastard son of a family of mercenaries, no doubt one of the Irish who left Ireland following the Treaty of Limerick; a descendant of the Wild Geese that served France, and finally broke the back of the English army at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745."

"That is very interesting," my father said, with all sincerity. "I wonder what led you to believe it was one of the Wild Geese. And why would they settle so far in this region of Eastern Europe?"

"Even the wildest regions of your imagination would conjecture a better reason than I, my friend," the general replied. "But, as God as my witness, I can assure you that it was the descendant of such an army. The boy's Christian name escapes me, but the family name was of French lineage: Bernadotte."

"Bernadotte?" my father said, quite surprised. "Is that not a Swedish name? I am sure it is. Bernadotte is the surname of the Swedish royal house, founded by one of Napoleon's marshals in 1810. Perhaps the boy was of French ancestry with Swedish connections, or vice-versa."

"I highly doubt that to be the case," the General spat, "for the boy was not but a common urchin and a loud-mouthed ruffian. That he would bother my darling niece as often as he did was unforgivable. My niece could not stand the very sight of the Bernadotte boy; could not go on for five minutes without beating him violently. Indeed, the boy did court her wrath in every way possible, in tongue and in gesture, though not always in ways that was conventional."

"Whatever do you mean, my friend?" my father inquired.

"There was one instance, when I found my niece's hands to be covered in dirt and bruises, and when I asked her, sternly, of how this had come about, she simply replied, quite proudly, 'You need not worry, dear uncle, for I have slaughtered the Belgian!'

And when I chanced to look behind me, I indeed found the Bernadotte boy, covered in mud and very recent wounds. I demanded of my niece why she felt the need to torment the boy in such a fashion.

'It is because he has been pulling the Van Winkle girl's hair,' my niece said, all smiles. "He said that mine is not long enough, but I showed him, uncle. From now on, he shall think twice before he teases other girls!'"

My father gasped in horror, but I felt that Seras must have adored the Bernadotte boy to have treated him so severely.

"I cannot imagine how you got on," my father said, "when she seemed to be such a sweet, gentle little lady when last I saw of her."

"Aye," the General nodded. "I wondered the same thing, myself, when I first took her in. But, as it turned out, it was only boredom and lack of discipline that drove my niece to such savage ways. Once I employed a governess, and set a strict schedule of daily lessons, such as drawing, sewing, piano forte, and even ballroom dance lessons, and other such tasks befitting to a young lady of her rank, she became far too engrossed in her tasks to have much time to create any real mischief."

My father nodded approvingly.

"She even proved to be an eager pupil, with time," the General said, now with tears in his eyes. "She would boast every evening over supper of the wonderful new things Madame Perrodon had taught her. And then, after supper, when we would retire into the drawing-room, she would implore me to sit down and recite to me a new song, poem or piano forte he had learned, which, she confessed, she hoped to someday recite to a crowd of ladies in gentlemen at an elegant ball. Nothing could ever be as radiant as her smile, nothing as hopeful as her dreams. . ."

The General broke off at this point, buried his face in his hands, and wept openly. I was very frightened; I had never seen a gentleman act as such, especially one with such a commanding air as that of the General. And yet, his sorrow affected me profoundly, and I too began to weep. I felt as if I now knew Seras more intimately than she might have known herself, and I was all the more saddened by her loss.

My father placed his hand on the General's shoulder, and murmured some comforting words so as to encourage him to cease his weeping. Once he did, the General looked upon my father, gratefully, and said:

"We have been very old friends; I knew you would feel for me, childless as I am. She had become an object of very near interest to me, and repaid my care by an affection that cheered my home and made my life happy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me on earth may not be very long; but by God's mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind before I die, and to subserve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and beauty!"

"You said, just now, that you intended relating everything as it occurred," said my father. "Pray do; I assure you that it is not mere curiosity that prompts me."

By this time we had reached the point at which the main road, by which the General had come, diverges from the road which we were traveling to the castle.

"How far is it to the ruins?" inquired the General, looking anxiously forward.

"About half a league," answered my father. "Pray let us hear the story you were so good as to promise."


	10. The Story

Author's Notes: Nothing to say, for once, enjoy. ^^

Disclaimer: I do not own Integra, Dracula, Carmilla, or Hellsing.

* * *

"With all my heart," said the General, with an effort; and after a short pause in which to arrange his subject, he commenced one of the strangest narratives I ever heard.

"My dear child was looking forward with great pleasure to the visit you had been so good as to arrange for her to your charming daughter." Here he made me a gallant but melancholy bow. "In the meantime we had an invitation to my old friend the Count Carlsfeld, whose schloss is about six leagues to the other side of Bistritz. It was to attend the series of fetes which, you remember, were given by him in honour of his illustrious visitor, the Grand Duke Charles."

"Yes; and very splendid, I believe, they were," said my father.

"Princely! But then his hospitalities are quite regal. He has Aladdin's lamp. The night from which my sorrow dates was devoted to a magnificent party. It was not a ball or a masquerade, mind you, for then my ward would have been considered too young to attend, and I would have been forced to leave her at home. I wish to God now that I had; that I should never have allowed her to be exposed to the evil that would pray on her then. I had believed, at the time, the company of ladies and noblemen to be a good influence on my poor Seras, for she was still nursing her residual habit of teasing the hired help, especially the Bernadotte boy."

"T'is a worthy goal, to be sure," my father said.

"The grounds were thrown open, the trees hung with coloured lamps. And such music—music, you know, is my weakness—such ravishing music! The finest instrumental bands and singers who could be collected, it seemed, from all the great operas in Europe. As you wandered through these fantastically illuminated grounds, the moon-lighted chateau throwing a rosy light from its long rows of windows, you would suddenly hear these ravishing voices stealing from the silence of some grove. I felt myself, as I looked and listened, carried back into the romance and poetry of my early youth.

"When the guests were gathered, and the festivities beginning, we returned to the noble suite of rooms that were thrown open for games and pleasantries. It was a very aristocratic assembly. I was myself almost the only 'nobody' present.

"My dear child was looking quite beautiful. Her excitement and delight added an unspeakable charm to her features, and she was quite a favourite among the gentry present, who were fond of their own children, and who felt that she reminded them of their own. During these exchanges, however, I remarked a young lady, dressed magnificently, but whose face was covered flirtatiously by a hand-held fan, who appeared to me to be observing my ward with extraordinary interest. I had seen her in the great hall earlier in the evening, and again on the terrace under the castle windows, similarly employed. A lady who was richly and gravely dressed, and with a stately air like that of a person of rank, accompanied her as a chaperon.

"We were now in one of the _salons_. My poor dear child had been dancing, an activity which had been expressly called for by various admirers, and was resting a little in one of the chairs near the door; I was standing near. The two ladies I have mentioned had approached and the younger suddenly took the chair next my ward.

" 'Surprise,' the young lady said, mysteriously. 'Were you expecting Prince Charming?'

"Before I could object to such an intrusion, her companion stood beside me. Availing herself of the privilege of her fan, she turned to me, and in the tone of an old friend, and calling me by my name, opened a conversation with me, which piqued my curiosity a good deal. She referred to many scenes where she had met me— at Court, and at distinguished houses. She alluded to little incidents which I had long ceased to think of, but which had only lain in abeyance in my memory, for they instantly started into life at her touch.

"I became more and more curious to ascertain who she was every moment. She parried my attempts to discover very adroitly and pleasantly. The knowledge she showed of many passages in my life seemed to me all but unaccountable; and she appeared to take a not unnatural pleasure in foiling my curiosity and in seeing me flounder in my eager perplexity, from one conjecture to another.

"In the meantime the young lady, whom her mother called by the odd name of Dalv, had, with the same ease and grace, got into conversation with my ward.

"She introduced herself by saying that her mother was a very old acquaintance of mine. She spoke of the agreeable audacity which a disguise rendered practicable; she batted the fan in front of her face coquettishly; she talked like a friend; she admired her dress, and insinuated very prettily her admiration of her beauty. She amused her with laughing criticisms upon the people who crowded the drawing-room, and laughed at my poor child's fun. She was very witty and lively when she pleased, and after a time they had grown very good friends, and the young stranger lowered her fan, displaying a remarkably beautiful face. I had never seen it before, neither had my dear child. But though it was new to us, the features were so engaging and lovely that it was impossible not to feel the attraction powerfully. My poor girl did so. I never saw anyone more taken with another at first sight, unless it was the stranger herself, who seemed quite to have lost her heart to my niece.

"In the meantime, availing myself of the license of an intimate party, I put not a few questions to the elder lady.

" 'You have puzzled me utterly,' I said, laughing. 'Is that not enough? Won't you, now, consent to stand on equal terms, and do me the kindness to lower your fan?'

" 'Can any request be more unreasonable?' she replied. 'Ask a lady to yield an advantage! Beside, how do you know you should recognize me? Years make changes.'

" 'As you see,' I said, with a bow, and a rather melancholy little laugh.

" 'As philosophers tell us,' she said; 'and how do you know that a sight of my face would help you?'

" 'I should take chance for that,' I answered. 'It is vain trying to make yourself out an old woman; your figure betrays you.'

" 'Years, nevertheless, have passed since I saw you, rather since you saw me, for that is what I am considering. Dalv, there, is my daughter; I cannot then be young, even in the opinion of people whom time has taught to be indulgent, and I may not like to be compared with what you remember me. You have no mask to remove. You can offer me nothing in exchange.'

" 'My petition is to your pity, to remove it.'

" 'And mine to yours, to let it stay where it is,' she replied.

" 'Well, then, at least you will tell me whether you are French or German; you speak both languages so perfectly.'

" 'I don't think I shall tell you that, General; you intend a surprise, and are meditating the particular point of attack.'

" 'At all events, you won't deny this,' I said, 'that being honoured by your permission to converse, I ought to know how to address you. Shall I say Madame la Comtesse?'

"She laughed, and she would have met me with another evasion—if, indeed, I can treat any occurrence in an interview every circumstance of which was pre-arranged, as I now believe, with the profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by accident.

" 'As to that,' she began; but she was interrupted, almost as she opened her lips, by a gentleman. He was dressed in black, looking particularly elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, and his face was the most deadly pale I ever saw, except in death. He was in the plain evening dress of a gentleman; and he said, without a smile, but with a courtly and unusually low bow:

" 'Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to say a very few words which may interest her?'

"The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token of silence; she then said to me, 'Keep my place for me, General; I shall return when I have said a few words.'

"And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little aside with the gentleman in black, and talked for some minutes, apparently very earnestly. They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and I lost them for some minutes.

"I spent the interval in cudgeling my brains for a conjecture as to the identity of the lady who seemed to remember me so kindly, and I was thinking of turning about and joining in the conversation between my pretty ward and the Countess's daughter, and trying whether, by the time she returned, I might not have a surprise in store for her, by having her name, title, chateau, and estates at my fingers' ends. But at this moment she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said:

" 'I shall return and inform Madame la Comtesse when her carriage is at the door.'

"He withdrew with a bow."

" 'Then we are to lose Madame la Comtesse, but I hope only for a few hours,' I said, with a low bow.

" 'It may be that only, or it may be a few weeks. It was very unlucky his speaking to me just now as he did. Do you now know me?'

"I assured her I did not.

" 'You shall know me,' she said, 'but not at present. We are older and better friends than you suspect. I cannot yet declare myself. I shall in three weeks pass your beautiful schloss, about which I have been making enquiries. This moment a piece of news has reached me like a thunderbolt. I must set out now and travel by a devious route nearly a hundred miles with all the dispatch I can possibly make. My poor child has not quite recovered her strength. Her horse fell with her, at a hunt which she had ridden out to witness, her nerves have not yet recovered the shock, and our physician says that she must on no account exert herself for some time to come. We came here, in consequence, by very easy stages—hardly six leagues a day. I must now travel day and night, on a mission of life and death— a mission the critical and momentous nature of which I shall be able to explain to you when we meet, as I hope we shall, in a few weeks, without the necessity of any concealment.'

"She went on to make her petition, and it was in the tone of a person from whom such a request amounted to conferring, rather than seeking a favour. This was only in manner, and quite unconsciously. Then the terms, in which it was expressed, nothing could be more deprecatory. It was simply that I would consent to take charge of her daughter during her absence.

"This was a strange, not to say, an audacious request. She in some sort disarmed me, by stating and admitting everything that could be urged against it, and throwing herself entirely upon my chivalry. At the same moment, by a fatality that seems to have predetermined all that happened, my poor child came to my side, and besought me to invite her new friend, Dalv, to pay us a visit.

"At another time I should have told her to wait a little, at least until we knew who they were. But I had not a moment to think in. The two ladies assailed me together, and I must confess the refined and beautiful face of the young lady, about which there was something extremely engaging, as well as the elegance and fire of high birth, determined me; and, quite overpowered, I submitted, and undertook, too easily, the care of the young lady, whom her mother called Dalv.

"The gentleman in black returned, and very ceremoniously conducted the lady from the room.

"The demeanour of this gentleman was such as to impress me with the conviction that the Countess was a lady of very much more importance than her modest title alone might have led me to assume.

"Her last charge to me was that no attempt was to be made to learn more about her than I might have already guessed, until her return. Our distinguished host, whose guest she was, knew her reasons.

" 'But here,' she said, 'neither I nor my daughter could safely remain for more than a day. I removed my fan imprudently for a moment, about an hour ago, and, too late, I fancied you saw me. So I resolved to seek an opportunity of talking a little to you. Had I found that you _had_ seen me, I would have thrown myself on your high sense of honour to keep my secret some weeks. As it is, I am satisfied that you did not see me; but if you now _suspect_, or, on reflection, _should_ suspect, who I am, I commit myself, in like manner, entirely to your honour. My daughter will observe the same secrecy, and I well know that you will, from time to time, remind her, lest she should thoughtlessly disclose it.'

" 'It is true,' the young lady said, rather impertinently. 'I am very terrible with keeping secrets, as well as telling lies.'

" The Countess then whispered a few words to her daughter, no doubt reminding her of the importance of exercising a little prudence. She then kissed her hurriedly twice, and went away, accompanied by the pale gentleman in black, and disappeared in the crowd.

" 'In the next room,' said Dalv, 'there is a window that looks upon the hall door. I should like to see the last of mamma, and to kiss my hand to her.'

"We assented, of course, and accompanied her to the window. We looked out, and saw a handsome old-fashioned carriage, with a troop of couriers and footmen. We saw the slim figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he held a thick velvet cloak, and placed it about her shoulders and threw the hood over her head. She nodded to him, and just touched his hand with hers. He bowed low repeatedly as the door closed, and the carriage began to move.

" 'She is gone,' said Dalv, with a sigh.

" 'She is gone,' I repeated to myself, for the first time —in the hurried moments that had elapsed since my consent— reflecting upon the folly of my act.

" 'She did not look up,' said the young lady, plaintively.

" 'The Countess had lowered her fan, perhaps, and did not care to show her face,' I said; 'and she could not know that you were in the window.'

"She sighed, and looked in my face. She was so beautiful that I relented. I was sorry I had for a moment repented of my hospitality, and I determined to make her amends for the unavowed churlishness of my reception.

"The young lady, replacing her fan, joined my ward in persuading me to return to the grounds, where the concert was soon to be renewed. We did so, and walked up and down the terrace that lies under the castle windows. Dalv became very intimate with us, and amused us with lively descriptions and stories of most of the great people whom we saw upon the terrace. I liked her more and more every minute. She gossiped without being ill-natured, was extremely diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great world. I thought what life she would give to our sometimes lonely evenings at home.

"This party was not over until long into the night; for gentile parties generally do last many hours, even days, and the Grand Duke was having such a grand time that loyal people could not go away, or think of bed.

"We had just got through the front gate, when my ward asked me what had become of Dalv. I thought she had been by her side, and she fancied she was by mine. The fact was, we had lost her.

"Now, in its full force, I recognized a new folly in my having undertaken the charge of a young lady without so much as knowing her name; and fettered as I was by promises, of the reasons for imposing which I knew nothing, I could not even point my inquiries by saying that the missing young lady was the daughter of the Countess who had taken her departure a few hours before.

"Just when all recovery of our young charge seemed futile, she stole behind my ward, and in a voice that was insinuative, if not seductive, 'Have you missed me, dear Seras?' and wrapped her pretty, pale fingers around my ward's slender neck. She gulped.

" 'Is that you, my Dalv?' she asked, with shuddering breathes, as the young lady behind her traced lazy patterns around her collar with long, smooth forefingers. There could be no doubt that our young friend had turned up; and so she had. Would to heaven we had lost her!

"She told my poor child a story to account for her having failed to recover us for so long. Very late, she said, she had gotten out to the rose garden by mistake, had then fallen into a deep enchantment with the moon, and had not sufficed to recover her wits until long after she realized how much time had passed.

"I could not bring myself to be put out for long, for she said all of this in such a calm, demure, if not apologetic, manner. She then instantly won our hearts again with her delightful wit and lively stories; and by the time our coach arrived, the whole of the incident was all but forgotten.

"That day Dalv came home with us. I was only too happy, after all, to have secured so charming a companion for my dear girl."


	11. The Priest

Author's Notes: I'm sorry for my long line of stinkers, I've really been out of sorts lately. I'll just finish the fics I've posted.

Disclaimer: I do not own Integra, Dracula, Carmilla, or Hellsing.

* * *

"The first few weeks of Dalv's stay were, to say the least, an unparalleled joy. Dalv was an absolute treasure to have in the house; and, for the first time, my poor Seras was brimming with delight. Never had I seen her so happy before, nor did I ever see her as happy again. They rarely left each other's side, during all waking hours, and were constantly in each other's confidence; whenever I chanced to behold my niece, she was always seemed to be in the midst of a stroll—or "walkabout," as our dear guest put it—whispering excitedly with her new companion.

"There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place, Dalv complained of extreme languor—the weakness that remained after her late illness—and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon was pretty far advanced.

"In the next place, it was accidentally discovered, although she always locked her door on the inside, and never disturbed the key from its place till she admitted the maid to assist at her toilet, that she was undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room in the very early morning, and at various times later in the day, before she wished it to be understood that she was stirring."

"My good man," my father exclaimed. "However could you believe this?"

"She was repeatedly seen from the windows of the schloss, in the first faint grey of the morning, walking through the trees, in an easterly direction, and looking like a person in a trance. This convinced me that she walked in her sleep. But this hypothesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she escape from the house without unbarring door or window?

"In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more urgent kind presented itself.

"My dear child began to lose her looks and health, and that in a manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened.

"She was at first visited by appalling dreams. Then, she was visited by a spectre, sometimes resembling Dalv, sometimes in the shape of a beast, walking round the foot of her bed from side to side. Lastly came sensations."

"Sensations?" my father breathed.

"Sensations," the General confirmed. "One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said, resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast. At a later time, she felt something like pair of large needles piercing her, a little below the throat, with a very sharp pain. A few nights after, followed a gradual and convulsive sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness."

I could hear distinctly every word the kind old General was saying, because by this time we were driving upon the short grass that spreads on either side of the road as you approach the roofless schloss which had not shown the smoke of a chimney for more than half a century.

You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symptoms so exactly described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl who, but for the catastrophe which followed, would have been at that moment a visitor at my father's chateau. You may suppose, also, how I felt as I heard him detail habits and mysterious peculiarities which were, in fact, those of our beautiful guest, Alucard!

"Are you sure these instances were caused by Dalv?" I said, impulsively, forgetting the terms in which custom dictated that I should be silent. "Surely there must have been some other reason for your poor niece's illness; surely you cannot believe it to be done by a young girl?"

"I do believe it," the General said coldly, "And once I've found my proof at Castle Dracula, the world shall know it also."

I could feel, as well as see, the silent reproof for my impertinent behavior, and so I remained silent for the rest of the drive; yet inside my emotions were in turmoil.

A vista opened in the forest; we were on a sudden under the chimneys and gables of the ruined village, and the towers and battlements of the dismantled castle, round which gigantic trees are grouped, overhung us from a slight eminence.

In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage, and in silence, for we had each abundant matter for thinking; we soon mounted the ascent, and were among the spacious chambers, winding stairs, and dark corridors of the castle.

"And this was once the palatial residence of the Draculas!" said the old General at length, as from a great window he looked out across the wide, undulating expanse of the pass. "It was a bad family; for, indeed, it reflects into their very name, for in Slavic Dracula means 'Devil.'"

"Indeed," my father said, "The last lord of this schloss, Count Dracula, was not particularly well-liked or well-known among the locals. There was much rejoice when he went to move to England all those years ago."

"Moved to England?" the General cried, outraged, "And did he not wreak havoc in his wake?"

"Not to the best of my knowledge," my father replied, "But my father, who was in London for business at the time, claims that his immigration was not unlike that of the Irish into English borders, mixing their 'drac-la'-which is Gaelic for 'bad blood,'-with England's "teeming millions."

"Indeed!" the General cried, much in a passion. "The very word 'Dracula' is universally known for its wretchedness, and here its blood-stained annals were written," he continued. "It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human race with their atrocious lusts."

My father and I exchanged uneasy glances.

"That is the chapel of the Draculas, down there."

He pointed down to the grey walls of the Gothic building partly visible through the foliage, a little way down the steep. "And I hear the psalm of a priest," he added, "chanting among the stones that surround it; he possibly may give us the information of which I am in search, and point out the grave of Countess Draculina. That wretched count kept many a beautiful woman in this dungeon of a schloss, one of which could undoubtedly have been his very own daughter."

"What brought you to that conclusion, old friend?"

"Of all the portraits in that wretched fortress," the General said through gritted teeth. "There is but one lady who looks consistently like him, among his other 'brides.'"

"Portraits?" my father asked, thinking it through. "Of course! you are referring to the many paintings of the lords and ladies preserved indefinitely in this noble line; no doubt your Dalv was a descendent?"

"Ay," the General spat. "A hellspawn from a pit of demons."

My father sent the General a glance, which, undeniably, showed his disbelief and disapproval.

"We have a portrait, at home, of Vlad Tepes, the Voivode of Wallachia. He is, I believe, a long standing ancestor of the more recent Dracula line; for, not only do they have the same surname, but his descendants do much resemble him; should you like to see it?" asked my father.

"Time enough, dear friend," replied the General. "I believe that I have seen the original; and one motive which has led me to you earlier than I at first intended, was to explore the chapel which we are now approaching."

"What! see the Impaling Prince," exclaimed my father; "why, he has been dead nearly half a Millennia!"

"I am not talking about the prince," the General barked, "But his wretched descendant, the Countess Draculina."

"I can hardly see where that would help," my father said, "For she is dead as her ancestor."

"Not so dead as you fancy, I am told," answered the General.

"I confess, General, you puzzle me utterly," replied my father, looking at him, I fancied, for a moment with a return of the suspicion I detected before. But although there was anger and detestation in the old General's manner, there was nothing flighty.

"There remains to me," he said, as we passed under the heavy arch of the Gothic church—for its dimensions would have justified its being so styled—"but one object which can interest me during the few years that remain to me on earth, and that is to wreak on her the vengeance which, I thank God, may still be accomplished by a mortal arm."

"What vengeance can you mean?" asked my father, in increasing amazement.

"I mean, to decapitate the monster," he answered, with a fierce flush, and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the hollow ruin, and his clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the handle of an axe, while he shook it ferociously in the air.

"What?" exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered.

"To strike her head off."

"Cut her head off!"

"Aye, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything that can cleave through her murderous throat. You shall hear," he answered, trembling with rage. And hurrying forward he said:

"That beam will answer for a seat; your dear child is fatigued; let her be seated, and I will, in a few sentences, close my dreadful story."

The squared block of wood, which lay on the grass-grown pavement of the chapel, formed a bench on which I was very glad to seat myself, and in the meantime the General called to the priest, who had been removing some boughs which leaned upon the old walls; and, bayonet in hand, the hardy old fellow stood before us.

I felt very uneasy about this priest, for I had often seen him walking about town, casting prayers and hymns for those who would have it, and patronizingly dismissing those who would not. He was kind enough to me, but I was always nervous that he would find out that I, like most Englishwomen, was a Protestant. For some unaccountable reason, for I knew him to be a very benevolent priest, I often had nightmares that he would charge me with bayonets in each hand, which he had once told me were relics from a holy war, while quoting passages from the Holy Bible and screaming "AMEN!"

"General Spielsdorf, Sir Hellsing," he said in greeting, in an accent which, as always, I was unable to identify. "I see you've come to the Devil's ruins for an afternoon visit, and brought your lovely little daughter with you. Ye shouldna done that, since this is no place for a lovely lady, and she does not seem well enough to leave bed, let alone withstand the residual darkness of such a haunted ruin."

"On the contrary, Father," I said, quite breathlessly, "I find this place to be very striking and melancholic."

"More's the pity," the priest said, with a strange glint in his eye. "Yer too young to be mixed up with demons and the like."

I did not have the heart to inform him that I feared it was already too late. Neither did my father, evidently, for he immediately asked after the castle's history.

He could not tell us anything of these monuments; but there was an old man, he said, a farmer in the Pass, at present sojourning in the house of another priest, about two miles away, who could point out every monument of the old Dracula family; and then he undertook to bring him back with him, if we would lend him one of our horses, in little more than half an hour.

"Have you been long employed about this castle?" asked my father of the old holy man.

"I have been a priest here," he answered, "under orders from His Holiness, and the Archbishop, all my days; so has my father before me, and so on, as many generations as I can count up. I could show you the very house in the village here, in which my ancestors lived. Mostly I take care of the children in the orphanage in town, for they do need looking after, and this ruin is rather deserted anyway; but I do come up from time to time, to see that everything's in order."

"How came the castle to be deserted?" asked the General.

"It was troubled by _revenants_, son; several were tracked to their graves, there detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning; but not until many of the villagers were killed."

"Really?" my father enquired, "For I heard that the villagers lived quite in fear of the. . . the revenants, as you call them."

"Indeed, they did," the priest nodded gravely. "But it so happened that the then ruler of the castle wished to retire to some far away land. Free of his oppressive reign, the villagers grew more confident, but when the attacks occurred again, more strongly before, they began to stand up for themselves for the first time that anyone could remember.

"But after all these proceedings according to law," he continued—"so many graves opened, and so many vampires deprived of their horrible animation—the village was not relieved. But a Dutch nobleman, who happened to be traveling this way, along with four gentlemen and a lady, heard how matters were, and being skilled in such affairs, he offered to deliver the village from its tormentor."

"Van Helsing," I heard my father exclaimed under his breath, but the priest did not hear, thankfully, and continued on as before.

"He did so thus: There being a bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers of the chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath him; you can see it from that window. From this point he watched until he saw the vampire come out of his grave, and place near it the linen clothes in which he had been folded, and then glide away towards the village to plague its inhabitants.

"The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the steeple, took the linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried them up to the top of the tower, which he again mounted. When the vampire returned from his prowling and missed his clothes, he cried furiously to the Dutchman, whom he saw at the summit of the tower, and who beckoned him to ascend and take them. Whereupon the vampire, accepting his invitation, began to climb the steeple, and so soon as he had reached the battlements, the Dutchman, with a stroke of his sword, clove his skull in twain, hurling him down to the churchyard, whither, descending by the winding stairs, the stranger followed and cut his head off, and next day delivered it and the body to the villagers, who duly impaled and burnt them.

"This Dutch nobleman had authority from the then head of the village to remove the tomb of the three noblewomen, including that of the Countess Draculina, which he did effectually, so that in a little while its site was quite forgotten."

"Can you point out where it stood?" asked the General, eagerly.

The priest shook his head, and smiled.

"Not a soul living could tell you that now," he said; "besides, they say her body was removed; but no one is sure of that either."

Having thus spoken, as time pressed, he took his bayonet and departed, leaving us to hear the remainder of the General's strange story.


	12. The Meeting

Author's Notes: I'm sorry for my long line of stinkers, I've really been out of sorts lately. I'll just finish the fics I've posted.

Disclaimer: I do not own Integra, Dracula, Carmilla, or Hellsing.

* * *

"My beloved child," he resumed, "was now growing rapidly worse. The physician who attended her had failed to produce the slightest impression on her disease, for such I then supposed it to be. He saw my alarm, and suggested a consultation. I called in an abler physician, from Piteşti."

"This abler physician," my father asked, with some caution, "was not by any chance the renowned Doctor Abraham Van Helsing?"

"Indeed, he was," the General said, with great surprise. "Have you heard of this Abraham Van Helsing?"

"Know him?" my father repeated, with that mysteriously smile of his, and a little nod of his head. "Yes, I suppose I have heard of him."

"Indeed?" the General said, "Well, at any rate, Dr. Van Helsing was rather busy in his own right, for his services are apparently so popular that he would not consider coming over until he heard of the symptoms my poor niece exhibited, and even then he was much delayed.

"Several days elapsed before he arrived. He was a good and pious, as well as a learned man. He insisted upon seeing my poor ward at once, and spoke with her very gently and kindly. My poor niece was still very wary of the male of the sexes, even while she was too weak to move, but took to the old physician very readily, and smiled with as much strength as she could muster in his company.

"To further win my darling niece's favor, I believed, he brought her a present that no young lady has ever been known to resist.

Shortly after I had arrived, Van Helsing opened a parcel with much impressment, and showed a great bundle of white flowers.

" 'These are for you, Miss Seras,' he said.

" 'For me?' her smile brightened, 'Oh, thank you Doctor!'

" 'Yes, my dear, but not for you to play with. These are medicines.' Here Seras made a wry face. "Nay, but they are not to take in a decoction or in nauseous form, so you need not snub that so charming nose. This is medicinal, but you do not know how. I put him in your window, I make pretty wreath, and hang him round your neck, so you sleep well. Oh, yes! They, like the lotus flower, make your trouble forgotten. It smell so like the waters of Lethe, and of that fountain of youth that the Conquistadores sought for in the Floridas, and find him all too late.'

Whilst he was speaking, Seras had been examining the flowers and smelling them. Now she put them down saying,

" 'Oh, Doctor, I believe you are only putting up a joke on me. Why, these flowers are only common garlic.'

To my surprise, Van Helsing rose up and said with all his sternness, his iron jaw set and his bushy eyebrows meeting,

" 'No trifling with me! I never jest! There is grim purpose in what I do, and I warn you that you do not thwart me. Take care, for the sake of others if not for your own.' Then seeing poor Seras scared, as she might well be, and before I could intervene, he went on more gently, 'Oh, little miss, my dear, do not fear me. I only do for your good, but there is much virtue to you in those so common flowers. See, I place them myself in your room. I make myself the wreath that you are to wear. But hush! No telling to others that make so inquisitive questions.'

"He was speaking very kindly now, but I could see that it was too late, and my niece would never trust the old physician again. It was clear that Seras viewed Van Helsing's fit of temper as a tell-tale act of betrayal, and she refused to speak, or even look at him thereafter. Any instruction Van Helsing directed toward her were pointedly ignored, except when given by the first physician, whom she did not like much better.

" 'I believe I know what is the cause of this ailment,' Van Helsing said afterward. 'For I have seen it many time in my life. Though lovely Miss Seras do not like me, the garlic will help, and she must wear it at all time, until further instruction is given.'

"Having seen my poor ward together, the two physicians withdrew to my library to confer and discuss. I, from the adjoining room, where I awaited their summons, heard these two gentlemen's voices raised in something sharper than a strictly philosophical discussion. I knocked at the door and entered. I found the old physician from Amsterdam maintaining his theory. His rival was combating it with undisguised ridicule, accompanied with bursts of laughter. This unseemly manifestation subsided and the altercation ended on my entrance.

" 'Sir,' said my first physician, 'my learned brother seems to think that you want a conjuror, and not a doctor.'

" 'Pardon me,' said Van Helsing, looking displeased, 'I shall state my own view of the case in my own way another time. I grieve, Monsieur le General, that by my skill and science I can be of no use. Before I go I shall do myself the honour to suggest something to you.'

"He seemed thoughtful, and sat down at a table and began to write. Profoundly disappointed, I made my bow, and as I turned to go, the other doctor pointed over his shoulder to his companion who was writing, and then, with a shrug, significantly touched his forehead.

"This consultation, then, left me precisely where I was. I walked out into the grounds, all but distracted. The doctor Van Helsing, in ten or fifteen minutes, overtook me. He apologised for having followed me, but said that he could not conscientiously take his leave without a few words more. He told me that he could not be mistaken; no natural disease exhibited the same symptoms; and that death was already very near. There remained, however, a day, or possibly two, of life. If the fatal seizure were at once arrested, with great care and skill her strength might possibly return. But all hung now upon the confines of the irrevocable. One more assault might extinguish the last spark of vitality which is, every moment, ready to die.

" 'And what is the nature of the seizure you speak of?' I entreated.

" 'I have stated all fully in this note, which I place in your hands upon the distinct condition that you send for the nearest clergyman, and open my letter in his presence, and on no account read it till he is with you; you would despise it else, and it is a matter of life and death. Should the priest fail you, then, indeed, you may read it.'

"He asked me, before taking his leave finally, whether I would wish to see a man curiously learned upon the very subject, which, after I had read his letter, would probably interest me above all others, and he urged me earnestly to invite him to visit him there; and so took his leave.

"The ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the letter by myself. At another time, or in another case, it might have excited my ridicule. But into what quackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all accustomed means have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at stake?

"Nothing, you will say, could be more absurd than the learned man's letter. It was monstrous enough to have consigned him to a madhouse. He said that the patient was suffering from the visits of a vampire! The punctures which she described as having occurred near the throat, were, he insisted, the insertion of those two long, thin, and sharp teeth which, it is well known, are peculiar to vampires; and there could be no doubt, he added, as to the well-defined presence of the small livid mark which all concurred in describing as that induced by the demon's lips, and every symptom described by the sufferer was in exact conformity with those recorded in every case of a similar visitation.

"Being myself wholly skeptical as to the existence of any such portent as the vampire, the supernatural theory of the good doctor furnished, in my opinion, but another instance of learning and intelligence oddly associated with some one hallucination. I was so miserable, however, that, rather than try nothing, I acted upon the instructions of the letter

I went to wish my darling niece goodnight, on her request, and immediately I asked where her garlic wreath was, for it was missing from her neck.

" 'Dalv did not like it,' she said weakly, 'and so I took it off.'

" 'My darling, have you no sense?' I cried, more in exasperation than in anger. 'Those were Dr. Van Helsing's specific orders!'

" 'I do not like Van Helsing,' my poor niece whispered, with tears in her eyes. 'He was so monstrous to me, and Dalv said that I smelled terrible, and would not come near me until I took them off. I wanted to be held by Dalv, Uncle, like my mother used to—I only wanted to be held.'

Her sorrowful confession moved my heart, and I could not bring myself to reprimand her, but instead was determined to see that the rest of the instructions were carried out. I kissed my niece on the cheek, murmured a few words of comfort—thankful to God that I did!—and made a great show of leaving her for the night.

"I concealed myself in the dark dressing-room that opened upon the poor patient's room, in which a candle was burning, and watched there till she was fast asleep. I stood at the door, peeping through the small crevice, my sword laid on the table beside me, as my directions prescribed, until, a little after one, I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl's throat, where it swelled into a great palpitating mass.

"For a few moments I had stood petrified. I now sprang forward, with my sword in my hand. The black creature suddenly contracted towards the foot of the bed, glided over it, and, standing on the floor about a yard below the foot of the bed, with a glare of skulking ferocity and horror fixed on me, I saw Dalv. Speculating I know not what, I struck at her instantly with my sword; but I saw her standing near the door, unscathed. Horrified, I pursued, and struck again. She was gone; and my sword flew to shivers against the door.

"I can't describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The whole house was up and stirring. The spectre Dalv was gone. But her victim was sinking fast, and before the morning dawned, she died."

The old General was agitated. We did not speak to him. My father walked to some little distance, and began reading the inscriptions on the tombstones; and thus occupied, he strolled into the door of a side-chapel to prosecute his researches. The General leaned against the wall, dried his eyes, and sighed heavily. I was relieved on hearing the voices of Alucard and Walter, who were at that moment approaching. The voices died away.

In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story, connected with the great and titled dead, whose monuments were mouldering among the dust and ivy round us, and every incident of which bore so awfully upon my own mysterious case—in this haunted spot, darkened by the towering foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its noiseless walls—a horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter and disturb this triste and ominous scene.

The old General's eyes were fixed on the ground, as he leaned with his hand upon the basement of a shattered monument.

Under a narrow, arched doorway, surmounted by one of those demoniacal grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old Gothic carving delights, I saw very gladly the beautiful face and figure of Alucard enter the shadowy chapel.

I could see the familiar light in her eyes when she found me, and I was filled with such a profound relief that I can barely express, even now.

I was just about to rise and speak, and nod smiling in answer to her peculiarly engaging smile; when with a cry, the old man by my side caught up the priest's bayonet and started forward. On seeing him a brutalized change came over her features. It was an instantaneous and horrible transformation, as she made a crouching step backwards. Before I could utter a scream, he struck at her with all his force, but she dived unscathed under his blow, and caught him in her tiny grasp by the wrist. He struggled for a moment to release his arm, but his hand opened, the bayonet fell to the ground, and the girl was gone.

He staggered against the wall. His grey hair stood upon his head, and a moisture shone over his face, as if he were at the point of death.

The frightful scene had passed in a moment. The first thing I recollect after, is Walter standing before me, and impatiently repeating again and again, the question, "What happened? Where is Miss Alucard?"

I answered at length, "I don't know—I can't tell—she went there," and I pointed to the door through which Walter had just entered; "only a minute or two since."

"But I have been standing there, in the passage, ever since Miss Alucard entered; and she did not return."

He then began to call "Alucard," through every door and passage and from the windows, but no answer came.

"She called herself Alucard?" asked the General, still agitated.

"Alucard, yes," I answered.

"Aye," he said; "that is Dalv. That is the same person who long ago was called Countess Draculina. Depart from this accursed ground, my poor child, as quickly as you can. Drive to the clergyman's house, and stay there till we come. Begone! May you never behold Alucard more; you will not find her here."


	13. The Ordeal

Author's Notes: They say there are seven stages to dealing with grief. Poor Integra is about to experience them all in rapid succession.

Disclaimer: I do not own Integra, Dracula, Carmilla, or Hellsing. I also do not know if I can make the ending worth reading, but all good things must come to an end.

* * *

"You cannot be serious," I whispered, though I hardly knew what I was saying.

To say that I was in shock would be an understatement; I was numb, breathless; I hardly knew what to say or what to think, or if I was saying or thinking anything at all. Everything felt so unreal, as though I were in a dream; and I half-expected to wake at any moment, or for Alucard to appear from the arched doorway, as she had, before the General struck at her. My breathing came out in deep, yet shallow gulps, and I touched the back of my hand to my forehead just to feel that it was there.

"Young lady, I am serious as the grave," the good General said. "Now begone from this place, and may you never see or think of it again."

"How can I not see or think of it," I challenged, breathlessly, "When this very castle, this very girl, has been part of my life for so long?"

"Foolish child!" the General shouted, and turned to look at me, "Do you really expect to stay here and be swallowed up by the very evil that wishes to do you in, just as my poor niece had? To be feasted on, and discarded when there is nothing left, like a corpse to a heartless vulture? Take heed, young Integra, and use your good sense to flee now while you still can!"

As he spoke, the physician I have told you about entered the chapel at the door through which Alucard had made her entrance and her exit.

"The very man!" exclaimed the General, advancing with manifest delight. "My dear Abraham Van Helsing, how happy I am to see you, I had no hope of meeting you so soon." He signed to my father, who had by this time returned, accompanied by my uncle, and leading the fantastic old gentleman, Abraham Van Helsing, to meet them. They introduced each other formally, though they had all been acquainted in one way or another, and they at once entered into earnest conversation.

I felt immediately indignant at having been so pointedly ignored, especially by my own grandfather, who hardly seemed to notice that I existed; but Walter was by my side in an instant, and was urging me to sit down, saying that I needed to recover my strength. So he led me back to the fallen pillar, and dabbed my face with a handkerchief, while I focused intently on the gentlemen ahead.

The General's sudden good-will toward Abraham Van Helsing seemed rather odd to me, since he had described him in not half as flattering a terms over the course of his story; but as I listened further, I found that it had been he who had instructed the General, through various letters and telegrams, where and when to hunt for the vampire. Every major city, castle, and location the General had travelled to search for the "monster" over the whole summer had been, in one way or another, from the recommendation of Doctor Abraham Van Helsing, whom he had been in constant contact with since the death of poor Seras Victoria.

Currently, the doctor took a roll of paper from his pocket, and spread it on the worn surface of a tomb that stood by. He had a pencil case in his fingers, with which he traced imaginary lines from point to point on the paper, which from their often glancing from it at certain points of the building, I concluded to be a plan of the chapel. He accompanied his lecture with occasional readings from a dirty little book, whose yellow leaves were closely written over.

"I was in this very castle, nigh fifty years ago," I heard the good doctor say, briefly, before they walked again out of my hearing range. "Long before I settle down in England to care for a beloved God child; long before my foolish Arthur, who had been dead to me on account of his many scandals, join the Austrian service and finally settle down in this fine region. Long before my unhappy Richard gave up making his own way and join his brother here in Transylvania; long before the beloved God child expired, and I took the job I have now, travelling the four corners of Europe.

"The last noble to reside within these walls was a fearful creature, both hated and revered by the tenants that attached themselves to his fiefs. Bored with ruling this backwater region, he called forth a solicitor and soon after moved to England, wherein he hoped to 'blend in' with its 'teeming millions.' Not too long after he begin menacing beautiful Miss Westenra, who was much beloved by several men, including a former student of mine, who summon me to see to her, before her untimely end. He then begin harassing the solicitor's wife, Madam Mina, and would have taken her as his own if we did not force him back to his lair and slay him where he stand; in that very tower."

He pointed to the highest tower, wherein the priest had mentioned the head vampire being killed in his story.

"The pattern is the same, I recognize it anywhere; first with the death of poor Seras Victoria, and now the declining health of dear Integra. I do not know if it be the same creature, which long since expire, for perhaps one of his own descendants, who wish to carry on what his master start with, and send a beautiful young girl ahead to avoid detection. One thing I know for certain; it is secrecy that give these creatures power, to slip behind out attention and do as they wish undisturbed. But once the secret is blown, they cannot slip undetected anymore, and we may find where they are, where they hide, and do away with them once and for all. Come, let us find the likely hiding place."

With the assistance of the priest, who soon returned, they sauntered together down the side aisle, opposite to the spot where I was sitting with Walter, conversing as they went. Then they began measuring distances by paces, and finally they all stood together, facing a piece of the side-wall, which they began to examine with great minuteness. At length they ascertained the existence of a broad marble tablet, with letters carved in relief upon it.

As I watched them all gathered together; the General, the Doctor, my father, my uncle, and the priest, talking strategically about their surroundings and planning accordingly, I realized all at once that they were not a group of learned gentlemen consulting together about how to find a cure for a sick girl, but an army of able-bodied men set on searching and destroying a monster. My Alucard.

"You cannot be serious," I said again, and stood and reached for them with a trembling hand. "You cannot possibly be serious!"

The gentlemen looked at me with mild surprise, as though they had forgotten I was there, and with grave concern, and annoyance.

"Your daughter is getting delirious," the General said to my father, "I suggest you send her home before she does harm to herself."

"You cannot seriously tell me," I said again, paying no heed to his words, "that you think _Alucard_ is the monster that has plagued poor Seras and myself all this time?"

"My dear," the General said gruffly, turning to me, "I do not think it; I _know_ it. I saw that very girl by my dear niece's bedside on the night of her murder, and I have seen her here, in this chapel, right before she slipped through my fingers; and by this time tomorrow, I shall see to it that no one shall ever behold her again."

"But you cannot!" I cried, "You cannot! You simply must be mistaken! It cannot be her, it simply cannot!"

"Integra," my uncle snapped, "Get a hold of yourself at once! You're making a scene."

"Yer daughter is becoming hysterical," the priest said, with grave disapproval. "It's best if ye take her hoome before she becomes possessed."

"Integra, dear, please be reasonable," my father said soothingly, "We are only trying to do what is best for you; to find what is causing your illness, and put a stop to it once and for all."

"Besides which, I saw that very beast attack my darling niece mere seconds before she expired!" the General yelled savagely, "And you dare to tell me it was not the one?"

"You don't understand," I cried, and I could feel my face flush with passion, and I began to tremble and shrug away from Walter, who tried to lead me away. I searched my mind frantically for some sort of explanation of Alucard's innocence, some sort of proof that she was not guilty. "I saw what attacked me," I cried suddenly, "the night that my illness began!"

"What?" my father cried, and the others murmured fervently.

"I saw who did this," I continued, more confidently than before. "The swelling black mass, the great black beast with many eyes, the needles that pierced my breast, the icy feel of cool water from a stream; I remember it all! And when I awoke, a gentleman was standing there, tall and dark, and before I could utter a scream, he slipped out."

"Babylon!" the priest cried, and they all began to whisper and shout furiously among themselves.

"It is the father of her natural child," my uncle said, "The very one that wretch Alucard told me of your having."

"Uncle," I cried, truly exasperated by that time, "For the last time, there _is_ no unnatural child; that was merely a jest on Alucard's part!"

"Does she often make jests on the conditions of young girls," the General said, with barely concealed disgust, "especially the daughter of Arthur?"

"I cannot say," I murmured, and I felt very warm at that moment, as though a terrible fever would consume me in an instant.

"My dear Integra," my father cried, as he approached me. "Why did you not tell me any of this?"

"I did not think it important," I said, too tired to give a proper answer. "I thought it just a dream, or perhaps a trick Alucard conjured up."

"A trick that Alucard conjured up?" the General cried, flushed red in such a passion that I was afraid he would have a stroke. "Indeed! You know that this _lilitû _is capable of great deception, yet you insist that she cannot be the monster that feasts on you!"

"That's because I know her," I cried, growing increasingly upset as the conversation went on. "Alucard has been nothing, if not honest, with me since I first met her, and if I believed she was capable of such an atrocity, I would know it; I would simply know."

"She does have that look about her as one who has been seduced by darkness," the priest said, with a horrible glint in this eyes that I had thought only existed in my nightmares. "An she does seem very desperate to proove her friend's innocence, despite the evidence shown against her. Perhaps tae defend her demonic friend, whom she may wish to join?"

"No!" my father cried, and he stood between me and the other gentlemen defensively. "My daughter is a good Christian girl; she would never succumb to a vampire's wiles."

"Are ye sure about that, Arthur?" the priest asked, "This girl seems rather attached to the monster that we seek; almost unnaturally so. How can we be sure he is not in league with it already?"

"That is because you do not know Alucard as we have," my father said, "She really is very charismatic, and my poor Integra was quite taken with her; it will take time, I'm sure, for her to come to accept what we know about her now."

"Come now Arthur," my uncle retorted. "That daughter of yours has been smitten with that devil since she first laid eyes on her; if Alucard were to crook her pretty little fingers, your daughter would come running!"

"Richard, that's enough," my father said. "I will not have you saying anything more about my daughter. She was taken with Alucard, it is true; we all were. But now she is very shaken, it will take time for her to get accustomed to Alucard's true nature."

"The vampire take many shapes," Dr. Van Helsing said, speaking up for the first time. "It how he snare his victim. He works through secrecy, trickery, and deceit; he never come out and declare who he is, saying 'I am a monster, now fear me!' He much more sneaky than that. He walks among his prey, disguised as his prey, like a chameleon, or a mantis, so that they do not fear him, or suspect him. Often he may take one step further, become what his prey want most; perhaps a beautiful girl, a handsome prince, or a faithful dog. Ha! But sometimes he may not appear as such, and must send others ahead for further trickery, and they hunt together in packs like wolves."

The good doctor said this so calmly, yet so smoothly, that we all forgot our panic at once, and began to mull over his words thoughtfully.

"And so you are saying we have more than one monster on our hands?" the General cried, and let out a cry of rage. "We will never exterminate them all!"

"We will exterminate them all," the good doctor said, "for there is only one place they gather, only one place they hide, during the daylight hours. When we find it, during the daytime, when they are at rest, we will smite them as God smites sinners, and the earth shall be cleansed."

"Amen," the priest said.

There was a round of murmuring agreement among the gentlemen, who, for the first time since the start of the meeting, were beginning to feel calm. They felt optimistic that they knew what the source of the danger was, and all they need do was hunt it and behead it, and all the madness would cease and all would be well again.

For myself, I felt worse than ever. It was as though everything I had ever known, ever trusted, ever loved had been tossed on its head, and I no longer knew what to believe or think. As it was, I was far too weak, too confused, to stand, let alone think, and so much had been said over the course of the evening, about me and about Alucard, that I could not bear to think on it anymore, and felt myself very nearly begin to swoon under the weight of my thoughts and emotions.

"As for dear Integra, perhaps it best if we take Integra in for the night," the good doctor said, "She look near faint as death, and will need her strength to fight Death until He give up on her come morning. His servant, the monster, is gone now, and we will not find her until we find the place she rest during daytime. Come, let us leave now, and confer our plans for a later date."

The old General, though not I fear given to the praying mood, raised his hands and eyes to heaven, in mute thanksgiving for some moments.

"To-morrow," I heard him say; "the commissioner will be here, and the Inquisition will be held according to law."

Then turning to the good doctor, whom I have described, he shook him warmly by both hands and said:

"Doctor, how can I thank you? How can we all thank you? You will have delivered this region from a plague that has scourged its inhabitants for more than a century. The horrible enemy, thank God, will at last be tracked."

My father led the doctor aside, and the General followed. I know that he had led them out of hearing, that he might relate my case, and I saw them glance often quickly at me, as the discussion proceeded.

Normally, I would have been curious over what they were saying, but I was too drained by what I heard over the course of the evening to inquire, or even care, what they were discussing, and only wished with all my heart that they would stop conferring so that we could go home, where Alucard would be waiting, as sweet and impertinent and harmless as she ever was, and we could all drink coffee and chocolate and tea in the drawing-room and talk about petty subjects like war and politics, and go on to bed and forget this dreadful night.

At long last, my father came to me, kissed me again and again, and leading me from the chapel, said:

"It is time to return, but before we go home, we must add to our party the good priest, who lives but a little way from this; and persuade him to accompany us to the schloss."

The priest in question was standing aloft, covered, as I thought, completely in shadows except for his round spectacles, which glinted brightly in the moonlight, so that I could not see his eyes. I felt terrible misgivings about bringing him along. He was a very tall man, perhaps no less than seven feet, and had a very broad build, as one is who is accustomed to hard labour instead of kneeling in prayer. He possessed a very strong jaw, with a great scar on one side, which gave him the appearance of a soldier rather than a clergyman.

His eyes glittered terribly when I saw him looking my way.

I gulped, and nodded hesitantly, yet remained close to Walter for the entire journey.

In this quest we were successful: and I was glad, being unspeakably fatigued when we reached home. But my satisfaction was changed to dismay, on discovering that there were no tidings of Alucard. Of the scene that had occurred in the ruined chapel, no explanation was offered to me, and it was clear that it was a secret which my father for the present determined to keep from me.

The sinister absence of Alucard made the remembrance of the scene more horrible to me. That she was charged as the source of my illness was distressing enough, but her conspicuous absence made her guilt all the more apparent to her ardent pursuers.

The good doctor and my father promised to take Alucard's possible innocence into consideration, but were determined to search for the culprit, regardless of who it was, and if she happened to be involved with this dreadful affair, then so be it.

Somehow, I felt little satisfied by this assurance, and slowly walked out of the room to prepare for bed, acutely aware that I would not be doing so with Alucard tonight, and longing for her more all the more.

The arrangements for the night were singular. Two servants, and Walter were to sit up in my room that night; and the ecclesiastic with my father were to kept watch in the adjoining dressing-room.

The priest was performing certain solemn rites for that night, the purport of which I did not understand any more than I comprehended the reason of this extraordinary precaution taken for my safety during sleep.

I saw all clearly a few days later.

As I passed by her old bedroom down the hall—the one with a broken door—who should I see standing outside the window, but my beloved Alucard?

Feeling so profoundly relieved to see her again, for reasons I can never explain, even now, I threw all caution and common sense to the wind and threw the window open; and kissed her and embraced her again and again.

I did not see her expression, though I supposed at the time that it was amusement, and she returned my kisses with answering passion; clutched my waist with her sharp little fingers and drew me to her in a trembling embrace that was familiar, ever and anon, from her amorous fits that I had once found so distasteful. I was exhausted, breathless; I clung to her, kissed her with as much passion as my condition and inexperience would allow; I craved her, wished more than anything that I could go beyond the limitations of flesh and become one with her, body and soul.

"Oh Alucard, the most dreadful thing has happened," I whispered breathlessly, "The General has returned, and he claims you are the one responsible for his poor niece's late illness, and my own."

She was silent for a moment, only held me. "What would you say if I was?"

The voice that uttered this was too deep and low to ever come from a young girl, even Alucard.

I started, looked at her, and was horrified to find the familiar glow of red eyes from her unusually harsh, angular face.

At that moment, my father and the good doctor emerged from the next room; and, upon seeing us standing there together, exclaimed my name in fear and ran toward us. But at the same moment, the same frightful change underwent Alucard's features, and she leapt from the window with her arm around my waist, and the last thing I saw was their terrified faces before the world went black.


End file.
